November 6, 2024
Biden struggles to reconcile unity message, fortified Capitol
Mr. Biden’s locked-down inauguration will cap nearly a year of COVID-19 lockdowns across the country.
Mr. Biden’s locked-down inauguration will cap nearly a year of COVID-19 lockdowns across the country.

President-elect Joseph R. Biden on Wednesday will give an inaugural address aimed at unifying the country, but he will wrestle with the grim reality that he must take the oath of office in a militarized zone.

From the west front of the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Biden at his inauguration will look out on a city fortified to fend off pro-Trump demonstrators after the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.

He’ll see a Washington coming under complete Democratic control and on the verge of an unprecedented Senate trial of a former president, with Mr. Biden’s Democrats trying to forever bar President Trump from again running for the White House.

Underscoring the deep political divide, Mr. Trump will boycott the inauguration, breaking more than 150 years of tradition of an in-person handoff of U.S. executive power.

“The situation he faces is absolutely brutal,” said Cody Keenan, who served as a chief speechwriter for President Obama and assisted with his two inaugural addresses.

However, he said Mr. Biden may be ”the perfect president for the moment because he is not hyperbolic, he’s not a bomb-thrower, he’s surrounded himself with policy wonks who already have all these plans. I think what we are going to hear him talk about is ‘Here’s where we are, here’s what we have to get done.’ I think that’s going to go a long way just to make people feel better.”

Conservatives set a much higher bar. They see any rhetoric about the need for more gun control or policing of online speech as driving a wedge into America’s political divide.

“It’s effectively not a unification. It is a forced re-education and it’s a dangerous path for a president to go down who was rejected by a majority of the states,” said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government.

[Interesting Read]

See Also:

(1) Impeachment charade hurts all of America

(2) The ‘post-Trump revival’ begins

(3) The Political Theater of the National Guard’s D.C. Occupation

(4) The painful symbolism of the 26,000 National Guard troops in D.C.

(5) A Dangerous World

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