Inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States
Inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United StatesReuters
Joe Biden’s inauguration speech was widely applauded. Even Republican strategist Karl Rove called it a ‘heartfelt appeal for unity’. Given the current political and social climate in America, any presidential appeal to unity was bound to be celebrated, provided the president-elect was not named Donald Trump.

Yet before we rush to acclaim Joe Biden as the Great American Healer, let us analyze his words a little more closely:

"We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.

We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we’re willing to stand in the other person’s shoes, as my mom would say, just for a moment stand in their shoes. Because here’s this thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days, when you need a hand, there are other days when we’re called to lend a hand."

Here we see how the opening sentence pretty much lays the onus for America’s conflicts on reactionary hillbilly Republicans. If that were not the case, the order of the adjectives could have been blended as to do justice to the culpability of both parties for America’s current divisions.

Biden was right to urge Americans to stand in the other person's shoes. It is regrettable that he made no real effort to stand in the shoes of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump. Those citizens supported Trump despite the ravages of the COVID pandemic, despite the deepest depression in living memory and despite the odium and bile which the mainstream media incessantly spewed on America’s former president.

Biden's inauguration speech suggests he lacks the only quality able to redeem America these days: magnanimity. Winston Churchill once urged his people to be “dignified in defeat and magnanimous in victory.” If Biden were a man of Churchill’s stature he would have reached out to the 74 million Americans not just with calls for unity, but more so with words of sympathy.

Together with appeals for racial justice, Biden should have recognized President Trump’s success in enacting prison reform legislation and reducing unemployment for African-Americans and Hispanics to record lows.

Together with calling America to “repair our alliance” with the world, Biden could have acknowledged his predecessor's historic breakthroughs in building bridges between the Arab world and Israel.

Together with calls to “reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and manufactured”, he could have conceded the role his supporters played in perpetuating the myth that Trump owed his election to Russian manipulation.

In other words, Biden could and should have shown empathy for some of the good reasons tens of millions of decent Americans voted to reelect Donald Trump without being moved by “racism, nativism, fear, demonization”.

Biden’s failure to acknowledge the merits of his predecessor cast a shadow on the generosity of his words. Could it be that his high-sounding rhetoric was motivated by political calculations rather than by a genuine desire to “stand in the other person’s shoes”?

In order to find out we will need to wait and see if Biden opts for bulldozing Trump’s legacy rather than building on it.

In the meantime, the inauguration speech was a missed opportunity to display genuine empathy and magnanimity in victory.

Rafael Castro is a Yale and Hebrew University educated business and political analyst based in Europe. Rafael specializes in proofreading, editing and ghostwriting quality texts for entrepreneurs and politicians. Rafael can be reached at [email protected]