Editorial of the “World”. With the notable exception of Donald Trump in 2017, calls for national unity are a classic in inaugural speeches by presidents of the United States. The one Joe Biden launched on Wednesday, January 20, from a Capitol still scarred by the attack on a crowd of insurgents two weeks earlier, had a particular resonance. Rarely has the pomp and ritual of this ceremony in which Washington is the theater every four years have seemed so necessary to try to bring together a weakened and divided country.
The 46e President of the United States adhered to it in a firm voice, with simple and direct eloquence. He was able to put into words the reasons for the “Disunity” American, underline the urgency of putting an end to this “Uncivil war”. He appropriately recalled the value of truth in public discourse and the damage caused by the systematic recourse to lies. “Politics does not need to be inflammatory”, he said. The lesson applies to all endangered democracies.
Paradoxically, the age of the Democratic president (78 years) and his long experience of power games, considered by many as a handicap, should serve him in this exceptionally difficult context. Joe Biden himself knew how to rebuild himself after multiple personal tragedies and political failures; in the eyes of a nation faced with the triple challenge of a deadly pandemic, a devastated economy and a weakened democracy, he embodies this endurance of which he was the herald on Wednesday.
What future for the Republican Party?
At her side, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, whose charisma shone on this strange inauguration day, symbolizes the strength and the richness of American diversity, to which the poem of the young Amanda Gorman has brought. a dazzling contribution. Mme Harris presides over a Senate that is now in the hands of the Democrats, thanks to the two newly elected members of Georgia, themselves revealing of the leaven of renewal in American politics. President Biden intends to tap into all sections of society; he should not forget, however, that Donald Trump’s 74 million voters are part of it.
An unknown, precisely, hovered over this cathartic ceremony: the future of the Republican Party and of the one who led it to the disaster of the events of January 6. The carefully staged presence of outgoing Vice President Mike Pence and the three former Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama did not make us forget the absence of the fourth, Donald Trump, who had chosen to boycott the nomination. of his successor. This break with the secular tradition of the peaceful transfer of power gives the measure of the crisis of the political system.
We must hope that elected officials and Republican officials seize the opportunity to alternate in the White House to try to get their voters back to the path of rationality. Too few of these elected officials have shown themselves willing to take this turn. They are responsible for condemning Donald Trump and his dreams of returning to oblivion in Mar-a-Lago.
President Biden also had a word in his speech for the allies of the United States, with whom he has promised to reconnect. It was, of course, only a sentence. But the decision, taken, as promised, on the first day of his arrival at the White House, to join the Paris climate agreement, which Mr. Trump had reneged on, is a welcome sign of the desirable return of states. – United in the concert of nations.
