While speaking in Tempe, Arizona to honor the legacy of his friend, the late Republican Senator John McCain, President Joe Biden challenged the audience to see things from a new perspective. In that speech, on September 28, 2023, Biden gave one of the most important (and yet largely ignored) speeches in recent history.“Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty. Regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections; accepting the outcome, win or lose. (Applause.) It means you can’t love your country only when you win. (Applause.)”
Joe Biden Honoring John McCain
Biden wanted people to understand the terrible threat to American democracy brought on by the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In his speech, he showed how other world leaders saw the threats. At the G7 Summit, shortly after his inauguration, Biden had told world leaders that “America is back.” Biden explained:
“I said, ‘America is back.’ And [French President] Macron looked at me, and he said, ‘Mr. President, for how long — for how long?’”Biden continued with his conversation with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany:
“And then, the Chancellor of Germany said, ‘Mr. President, what would you think if you picked up the paper tomorrow — tomorrow, the London Times — and it said a thousand people broke down the doors of Parliament, marched, and killed two bobbies in order to overthrow an election of the new prime minister? What would you think then? What would America think?’”That analogy, that comparison, accomplished two purposes. First, Biden warned that the rest of the free world worries about the United States. Will we endure? Will we continue to lead the free world? Second, it helped us remove our blinders, to look at ourselves.
To help his audience understand that perspective, Biden reminded us that:
“We are the essential nation. We are the essential nation. The rest of the world is looking.”
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President Joe Biden Told the United Nations the World Has a Choice
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How is it that Americans shrink in horror when other countries disintegrate into chaos, but wallow in apathy as our own country falls apart? To answer that question, we must change our perspective. As Biden said:
“And now, history has brought us to a new time of testing. Very few of us will ever be asked to endure what John McCain endured. But all of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy? Will we, as John wrote, never quit? Will we not hide from history, but make history? Will we put partisanship aside and put country first? I say we must and we will. We will.”Six months after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, most Republicans said that they just wanted to move on. Unfortunately, indeed, too many Americans still seem to have moved on from a brazen insurrection against our Constitution, happy to pretend that American politics still functions as usual. According to polls, only 36% of Republicans felt that the insurrection “was a crisis or major problem.” Stunningly, only 55% of Democrats felt that “democracy is under attack.” Only a new perspective can show us that we are living in delusion.
And yet, too many Americans obsess over brief spikes in fuel prices or the cost of bread, ignoring the key issue; that our system of governance is falling apart. When conservatives obsess about returning to 1776, they forget that the 1700’s were “the Age of Reason.” Can a reasonable speech like Biden’s, no matter how well executed, still affect public opinion? Or, as Benjamín Franklin is rumored to have said, when asked about the then-new Constitution: “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Benjamin Franklin’s Speech about Our Fallible Constitution
by William D. Harpine
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Alternate transcript at this website
© William D. Harpine, 2023
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