President Biden so resembles my own Dad, a little in appearance, a little in manner of speaking, and alike, one hundred percent grounded in the character of fundamental human decency.
Hours after the ceremony, doing the job. Day One. Rejoin Climate Accord and World Health Organization. Deal with the vast devastation of COVID, Defense Production Act. Restore DACA and reunite immigrant families. Address food insecurity. Address the system of for-profit private prisons and the lasting inequities of incarceration. Hold on student debt. Hold on evictions. End Muslim ban.
New senators sworn in. Daily news conferences, straightforward and honest. Address to federal employees. Day One. Competence.
Earlier in the week I’d drafted this post as Bipolar America. In my media silo, there were two chatter streams. Sunday’s New York Times op-eds by Michelle Goldberg and Nicholas Kristof, two terrific writers, voiced them both.
Goldberg wrote of the truly frightening and persistent right-wing, white supremacist threat that must be dealt with. Surely some of those people are in economic distress. Many, though are solid middle-class or better off, some plain racist, scared silly at the prospect of slipping a rung on the relative deprivation ladder, vulnerable to demagoguery, influenced by distorted media sources.
Kristof wrote of President Biden’s informed-with-actual-expertise and specific plan to address critical immediate and long-standing problems in our country, hearkening back to my hero, FDR. People with troubles need to see a government working for them. Nine bows to the honest public servants who will do some heavy lifting in coming months (and if I might speculate, will be eager to do their jobs right again). (With empathy for them, I note that in my career I’ve had only one truly bad boss. So I’m lucky. But I did experience it. Not being able to do one’s best work wears one down. But inspiring leadership fuels the effort and the people who create results.)
Despite a seriously long list of work tasks, last night I only could concentrate on reading and streaming the transition. I saw the lit flags on the Mall. I saw respect for lives lost along the reflecting pool from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial. I saw dignity in our new leadership. Amazing Grace and Hallelujah.
This morning, President Biden, Vice President Harris, their families, and some others began inauguration day with service at Saint Matthews Cathedral.
A beautiful, inspiring young woman named Amanda Gorman, most graceful superstar of this new year, youngest poet laureate to speak at inauguration, delivered with courage and eloquence.
Bernie Sanders’ mittens. Keep coming memes, can’t get enough.
That short walk to the White House, with the President fist-bumping and sprinting.
White House dogs Champ and Major. Indoguration, my RSVP is a yes.
I’m a Midwest-raised (blue state Illinois) girl with the most solid upbringing imaginable. So optimism, and very little capacity for cynicism, are in my bones.
Just after noon in Austin, January 20, 2021. Hope, relief, and a whole lot of repair ahead.
President Biden spoke plainly, authentically, as does my Dad, and rightly for this moment.
The words of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural, of course, are famous.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
My early childhood was framed by JFK.
“So let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
And I could not leave my car (in a supermarket parking lot way back in 2004) when Barack Obama began that keynote convention speech. Stayed until he finished.
“Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope. In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”
FDR was underestimated when he became President. Some people underestimate President Biden. Who can predict when the right person for the time will be there?
The White House was disinfected today. I believe we’ll deal justly, eventually, with the destructive people who’ve darkened these past several years and caused such damage. But (quoting Aragorn) it is not this day. Today we put on our shoes and get back to work.
Dayna Finet 