When Joe Biden raises his hand to swear in office, he will replace a better-known president to raise his fist, in his inauguration and on Jan. 6. Biden will soon stand on the same steps that his predecessor turned into a crime scene. .
The capital lobbies, which were once filled with schoolchildren with backpacks, are now filled with bivouacs. Bunting replaced by barricades. Parades with plywood. No amount of American flags will be able to clear the memory of their use in the attack.
“I think the sense that many Americans have had since the beginning of the pandemic, that we are experiencing an unprecedented crisis, has exploded into something even bigger,” said Harvard professor Jill Lepore .
Use the word “unprecedented” carefully. Author of a comprehensive account of America (“These Truths: A History of the United States”), she has a slow impulse as a historian. But, according to her, the word adapts to our times.
“I think a comparison would be 9/11, which in many ways is a very different political moment and a completely different case of violence,” Lepore told “60 Minutes” correspondent John Dickerson. “It’s essentially an act of war. But I think at that time Americans understood that something had changed profoundly.
“I think we will remember January 6 in the same way, which is a day when everything changed, when the unthinkable became possible in the United States.”
“It was, at least for one reading, the president who incited a crowd to go after the legislature,” said Jamelle Bouie, a columnist for The New York Times. “Even with the president out of office very soon, it will remain a crisis, not because it is there, but because we have learned something about the political system. We have learned something about what is possible and what at least some faction of voters is. and American lawmakers believe in the nature of our democracy, which is that if they can’t win, the person who does it or the party who does it is not legitimate. “
Bouie referred to Abraham Lincoln’s 1858 speech “A House Divided”: “And, you know, the contemporary discussion about this or, in the discussion popularly, “divided house” usually refers to that of political division. But the literal metaphor was, ‘A house cannot stand like this; it must be one thing or it must be the other.’
Dickerson said, “Okay, the“ Divided House ”speech isn’t“ Now, let’s all get together; is: “One of the parties must win this argument.”
“Right. And there is no alternative in a long time horizon in which we can have a faction of Americans who look at the attack on the Capitol and see it as something to be imitated or to be repeated. , as something that is commendable. Like, that Constitutional Government cannot coexist as we understand it, “Bouie said.
Carolyn Kaster / AP
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson said: “We have a policy that is now widely seen as a team sport. The biggest problem is giving help and comfort to the other side, rather than, you know, talk between these differences “.
Gerson was the lead writer of President George W. Bush’s inaugural speech in 2001: the speech came after the bitter 2000 election the Supreme Court had decided:
“The United States has never been united by blood, birth, or soil. We are tied to ideals that take us beyond our background, elevate us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be a citizen.”
“I went back and read the speech recently,” Gerson said, “and I found myself suffocating, not just because of the words, but because that was a realistic perspective that we could have a national healing based on national values.
“My concern right now is, is this a naive approach? You know, the assertion of common values will be accepted by a country living in different cultures and ways of life?”
The problem, Gerson said, is that President Trump and the Republican party have ignited politics at such a high temperature that it cannot be reduced.
“Well, I think apocalyptic language is one of the worst problems in our politics: that vision that, if lost, the country is lost,” Gerson said. “This is a way to motivate participation. It’s also a way to destroy the country’s institutions.”
President Trump’s apocalyptic theater, with himself as the protector of Christianity, was performed last summer at the same venue where Biden will begin its opening day: St. John’s Church, just steps from the White House. .
“Politics has to be flexible; there has to be,” Lepore said. “You have to be able to tolerate the political opinions of your political opponents. They have to be legitimate opinions. They can’t be heresies. And this fusion of religion and politics throughout the 20th century, we already know, we see the cost of that ara “.
In 1801, after one of the ugliest political campaigns in America, Thomas Jefferson attempted to put out the flame. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle,” he said in his inaugural speech, promising stability because “error of opinion can be tolerated when reason is left free to fight it.”
But is reason still up to par?
Lepore said, “If you attack the institutions that produce and spread knowledge, if you attack them without knowledge, you will come to that point where you have undermined the very idea that there is such a thing as knowledge.”
The new Biden administration can benefit simply by offering a steady stream of useful information, which can reactivate the forgotten “slow news day”.
Lepore said, “In fact, you just have to introduce yourself, have real information, bring in people who do their job, and answer questions that the press and the public have.”
“Only the facts, madam?” Ruler? Dickerson asked.
“Yes,” he laughed. “I actually think that goes pretty far.”
The most difficult task for the incoming administration will be to talk to voters who fear it.
Gerson said: “I think this will be their main task at this inauguration, it’s to talk to Americans who no longer feel related to this experiment, and to tell them that they have a stake and that they are valued in this system. that you have to give way to the people who have supported Trump over the years to find a different way of doing politics.You know, you can’t rule them out as always polluted.
“Rhetoric can do a lot to try to create space for common sense. And I think that’s what they should be looking for right now, a way to give a refuge (a rhetorical refuge) to those who want to serve the country.”
Joe Biden will be inaugurated with the scar of insurrection. But the wound on the Capitol will be on his back. In front? The path to convalescence was found in the millions of people who marched, concentrated, and voted peacefully; and the officials who protected the vote. They joined a tired army that already maintained the faith: the first responders and our neighbors took us for a year of pandemic.
The inaugurations are a great reopening of the American experiment, where hope lies not in those who broke their standards, but in those who, despite feeling broken, confirmed these rules.
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Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Remington Korper.