“Inauguration ruminations: A podcast.”
Where will Biden take us?
Earlier today Jospeh R. Biden Jr. was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Expectations, in some quarters, seem quite high, and nowhere is this truer than among the establishment media, where Donald Trump’s (no doubt temporary) departure from the scene has elicited sighs of relief and the hope that Biden and Vice–President Kamala Harris will return us to “normalcy.”
But is a return to what the establishment considers normal what the moment calls for?
The Scrum’s founding editors, Patrick Lawrence, Marshall Auerback, and James Carden, gathered shortly after Biden’s inaugural address to discuss the speech, its implications, and what we might expect from the incoming administration. Did the speech rise to the moment? What did Biden really mean when he called (incessantly) for “unity”—text and subtext? And is unity even possible in an era in which paranoia and suspicion of one’s political opponents abound?
These, among other questions, we attempted to answer this afternoon.
—J. C.
