The first Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln it was a 3,600-word olive branch for a South on the eve of the Civil War.
His second promised absence of evil towards all after the war left 620,000 dead.
Americans have long revered both speeches because they offered a measure of redemption, and a means of reconciliationthose who least deserved it.
The speech of Joe Biden in Philadelphia last week bears no resemblance to either speech, except that, at his own inauguration, he vowed to end “this uncivil war that pits red and blue”.
Untill there.
Like his predecessor, whom he denounces, Biden has decided that the best way to seek partisan advantage is to treat tens of millions of Americans like the enemy within.
How can make a mistake an American president in identifying threats to democracy?
Biden offered a master class.
It begins with the “MAGA Republicans,” who, according to Biden, “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
Who are they?
The president admitted that “it’s not even the majority of Republicans.”
Then, in outlining his goals, he cast a net so wide that it included everyone from those who applauded the attack on Capitol Hill and efforts to nullify the 2020 election, to those who oppose abortion rights and gay marriage.
This category is very wide.
Includes the violent Oath Keepers y a los Proud Boys, as well as to all faithful Catholics or evangelical Christians whose deep moral convictions lead them to oppose legalized abortion.
Includes those anti-semites who demonstrated in Charlottesville, as well as socially conservative Americans with traditional beliefs about marriage, which would have included Barack Obama during his presidential bid in 2008.
encompasses the undoubteds deniers of the elections, such as attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman, along with ordinary Americans who have been bamboozled to entertain misguided but sincere doubts about the integrity of the last election.
In other words, Biden pretended to distinguish MAGA Republicans from the mainstream and then proceeded to confuse them.
That may resonate with partisan Democrats who have never seen a conservative they don’t consider a fanatic or a fool.
But it belies the idea that the dismantling of MAGA republicanism is the main objective of the president or his party.
Then there are the purposes transparently partisan of Biden’s speech.
For this election cycle, pro-Democratic groups have spent more than $40 million in ad buys to help nominate the most Trump-like candidates in the Republican primaries, on the theory that they will be easier to expire in November.
That included a successful effort to defeat Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer – one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year – in last month’s GOP primary.
Is that smart as a hard ball policy?
Perhaps.
But Biden could have saved us the cheesy about timeless American values.
To my knowledge, he has yet to say a word in public against ad buying, let alone try to stop it.
Instead, his speech is a good culmination to a strategy for promoting the MAGA extremists so they can be denounced as MAGA extremists.
Some liberals took a similar approach in 2016, all but encouraging Trump to win the nomination on the theory that he would be the weaker opponent of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Look how that turned out.
And then there was the crass part of Biden’s speech, in which an ostensible presidential address turned into a campaign rally for Democratic priorities like prescription drug benefits and the “future of clean energy.”
When a president makes the implicit claim that to be a little Democrat you have to be a great Democrat today, he is not advancing the interests of his party or the country.
Single gratuitously insult millions of voters as deplorable, while again branding the Democrats as the party of sanctimoniousness and condescension.
I write this as someone who has long thought that Trump poses a unique threat to democracy.
He is the only president in American history who has refused to grant an election, who has schemed with conspiracy theorists to stay in power, who has tried to intimidate state officials into finding votes for him, who has incited a mob, encouraged an assault on Congress, endangered the life of his vice president, flouted Justice Department demands to return classified documents, violated every rule of American policy and all form of democratic decency.
He is the tribune of the “spirit of the turbacracy” which Lincoln warned against in his first great speech, and which he dedicated his life to stopping.
The gravest threat facing American democracy today is not the Republican Party, MAGA, or anyone else.
It’s Trump.
He is a man, sinister but also a buffoon.
To defeat him, the main task is to make look smallvery small.
Biden’s ill-fated speech did just the opposite.
The next time Biden talks about democracy, he should remember Lincoln’s other exhortation:
charity for all
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