Danbury observers: Biden’s ‘uncivil war’ speech hearkens to Lincoln.
DANBURY — As President Joe Biden called for a truce in the “uncivil war that pits red against blue,” three local observers had the same thought as they watched the 46th president of the United States address the nation for the first time.
A return to politics as usual may be a welcome change.
“Donald Trump came in to break all the rules and break all the traditions … and he did that,” said JC Barone, an associate professor of communication and media arts at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “After watching Joe Biden and the coming together of Republicans and Democrats, at least for today, a return to normalcy and even boredom is going to be a relief to a lot of people.”
Barone and two colleagues observed that if Biden’s goal in his inauguration speech was to walk the tightrope between unity and accountability without falling, he succeeded.
It’s no small feat, the observers said, at a time when the nation seems as divided as 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln gave his first inauguration speech at the start of the Civil War.
“It’s a very difficult line to walk between acknowledging the obstacles and avoiding the automatic assumption that we’re better than this, because a lot of us are skeptical that we’re better than this” said Leslie Lindenauer, a professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. “(Biden) needed to strike a tone of unity without minimizing the obstacles in our path — and the fact that he called out white supremacy is pretty remarkable.”
Lindenhour was referring to Biden’s noontime speech from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, where two weeks ago extremist supporters of Trump broke through a police barricade and ransacked offices. Trump left the White House Wednesday morning to avoid Biden’s inauguration.
In a navy overcoat and a cornflower tie, Biden said the country was facing “a winter of peril and significant possibilities” represented by the coronavirus and institutional racism, and exacerbated by “political extremism, white supremacy, (and) domestic terrorism.”
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, urban versus rural, conservative versus liberal,” Biden said. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
Biden kept his balance on the tightrope with the help of poetry, said Jessica Schofield, an assistant professor of political science at Western Connecticut State University.
“He said without unity, there is ‘No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos,’ ” Schofield said. “When he said, ‘unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days’ I think he was coming from a place of sincerity.”
Barone and Lindenhour agreed with Schofield that it’s unclear how 74 million Americans who voted for Trump will hear Biden’s call for unity with a trial planned in the Senate on Trump’s second impeachment.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives last week for inciting the attack on the Capitol.
“How do you walk that line?” Barone asked. “Do you hold people accountable for a horrendous attack or do you say, ‘let bygones be bygones?’ ”