THE BIDEN-HARRIS INAUGURAL: FOR WHAT WE ARE ABOUT TO RECEIVE

 

The last episode of the great television drama The West Wing centers around the inauguration of Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits) as successor to the show’s two-term president, Jeb Bartlett (Martin Sheen). While riding to the capitol, Bartlett asked Santos about his speech. Santos replied that it included a few good lines, but nothing like John F. Kennedy’s ‘Ask not what your county can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ Bartlett sneered, “Yeah, JFK really screwed us with that one, didn’t he?”

When Joe Biden delivers his inaugural address, it’s unlikely he can meet the JFK standard either. Nobody has since that bitterly cold day in 1961 and little in Biden’s rhetorical past suggests he has such a speech in him. That doesn’t diminish the importance of the moment or the address he will give.

 

A Different Inaugural

Few inaugurals in American history present the combination of challenges this one does. Perhaps this resembles 1933 as Franklin Roosevelt faced the great depression. Maybe 1864 compares when the nation remained deadlocked in the Civil War. Knowing Biden could do as well as Abraham Lincoln that day would put everyone’s mind at ease.

With the January 6 invasion and occupation of the U.S. Capitol by a mob inspired by outgoing President Donald Trump, our political situation arguably rivals what Lincoln faced. These marauders, having builtgallows outside, marched through the building waving Confederate flags and shouting “Hang (Vice President) Pence.” The House of Representatives has since impeached Trump for his role in the insurrection and the U.S. Senate will soon hold a trial.  Add the pandemic that has killed 400,000 Americans and still rages and throw in the historic nature of the new vice president’s ascent and we have a truly unprecedented situation.

The January 6 debacle means a massive security presence at the capitol for the

inaugural ceremonies, including thousands of National Guard troops, tall fences, concrete barriers, and multiple checkpoints for capitol employees and the limited number of visitors who can attend the festivities. Inaugurals play a key role in showing the nation and the world what a peaceful transition of power looks like in a

democracy. Trump’s decision that he won’t attend diminishes that to an extent, but even the symbolic power of an appearance by the outgoing president pales in comparison with the need for putting the destructive Trump presidency in the rear-view mirror. Biden now doesn’t want him at the inaugural and neither do many Americans.

   

The security arrangements and the pandemic dictate that this inauguration

look different than any we’ve seen. First, thousands of people won’t look on from the capitol mall. Though Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will take their oaths of office on the capitol steps as usual, social distancing will keep attendance at a fraction of normal. Biden’s inaugural committee has told his supporters they shouldn’t travel from across the country for the proceedings, recommending television or virtual viewing.

 

The Harris Factor

The challenges of the nation’s political divide, Trump’s impeachment, the pandemic, and the resulting economic difficulties will justifiably make Biden’s speech the lead in every post-inauguration news story. Calmer circumstances would likely mean more emphasis on the swearing in of the nation’s

first female president or vice president. Kamala Devin Harris of California will make that history when she takes the oath of office as the 49^th vice president. That she is also a woman of color only increases the historical significance. Trump’s blatantly racist presidency and the number of Americans who would have given him a second term squash any suggestion her election hails a post-racial America.

 

Biden says she will play the same kind of role in this administration he played in the Obama-Biden years. He promises he will consult her on every major decision and make her the “last person in the room” in those situations.

 

The Speech and the Job Ahead

Harris will stay busy presiding over the senate following Democratic victories in Georgia runoffs that made the upper chamber a 50-50 party split. The incoming administration has plenty on its plate. Biden and Harris emphasize how much they will focus on the pandemic. As one observer put it, the coronavirus remains the “boss” of everything and everybody. Until the country gets it under control the things ordinary Americans most want can’t happen -- an economic revival and a return to normal life unfettered by social distancing,fan-less sporting events, and restrictions on family and  other gatherings. The pandemic, the limping economy, the political and racial divisions January 6 so starkly demonstrated, and the country’s fragile psyche make for a long, complicated to-do list.

      

Biden’s speech, therefore, requires substantive and spiritual components. Substantively, he need not provide every detail, but he should offer an outline for conquering the pressing problems, including the need for restoring the hollowed out federal government Trump leaves him. He must convince people he will work for them and show he will govern in a way that benefits everyone.

 

The moment also requires a speech that touches souls. It must offer hope for renewing the American spirit. After four years of a lawless, destructive presidency marked by racial discord and political turmoil, a bitter campaign, and a dangerous, tumultuous lame duck period, Biden faces a tired, discouraged, and distraught country.

 

Inaugurals serve many functions. They

represent renewal  and new beginnings. They also put American democracy on the world 

stage and advertise the virtues of our system. January 6  and Trump’s four years

dimmed our brand. America’s first chance at polishing its image comes with the Biden-Harris inaugural. Even with an 

dimmed our brand. America’s first chance at polishing its image comes with the Biden-Harris inaugural. Even with an impeachment proceeding against Trump pending in the U.S. Senate, a little JFK-style inspiration might help.

PICKING A VICE PRESIDENT: START WITH WHAT, NOT WHO.

PERHAPS JOE BIDEN’S MOST IMPORTANT DECISION

Former Vice President and presumed

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has named his vice presidential selection steering committee. The group will help Biden with vetting potential running mates. Biden has already said he will choose a woman.

In due course, we’ll weigh in on prospective candidates. Pundits are floating about a dozen names. With the pick not

expected until late next month at the earliest, we’ll have time to comment on the pros and cons of possible choices. For now, we focus on what Biden should look for, not who. 

The unique circumstances in 2020 make this selection that much more important.  If

elected,  Biden would take office at age 78, older than any person ever upon first inauguration. He has hinted he wouldn’t seek a second term, putting his vice president in prime position to succeed him. Since the Second World War, six vice presidents have gone on to become president. In that same period, no major party has denied the presidential nomination to a vice president or former vice president who sought it. 

So, what qualities should Biden seek? We each made lists and factored them together, arriving at a four-part test we now present in no particular order. Each of us may assign more importance to one or another of these traits, but we really want someone with all of them.

Electability: You can’t Save Souls in an Empty Church

All three of us recognize the vice presidential candidate must help Biden

The Nightmare - The Art of Mark Bryan

win the election and end the Donald Trump nightmare. Woodson goes so far as to list the states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan – he thinks the vice presidential candidate must help Biden carry. Ideally, the person could help turn out core Democratic voters – blacks, browns, millennials, suburban women – perhaps putting in play states like Texas and Georgia.

The research on how much a vice presidential candidate can help presents

a mixed bag. A few studies say the second banana can make up to a three-percentage point difference. Others say it’s less, if any.

There’s disagreement about whether a vice presidential candidate can help carry a particular state, especially the candidate’s home state. John Kennedy – and most analysts of the 1960 election – believed Lyndon Johnson secured Texas for the Democrats that year. Some think Tim Kaine helped Hillary Clinton carry Virginia in 2016. On the other hand, Lloyd Bentsen couldn’t help Michal Dukakis win Texas in 1988. John Edwards didn’t claim North Carolina for John Kerry in 2004.

The Ready-to-Play Test: Can She Be President?

Henry states this as a matter of “experience in governance.”  For Rob, it’s “gravitas” – can we envision the vice president as commander-in-chief, confronting a foreign crisis (or a national pandemic)?  In the event of Biden’s death or incapacity, could the new or acting president rally the nation to a cause? 

John McCain paid a huge price for picking someone unprepared for national office in Sarah Palin. Though she gave McCain an initial boost in the polls, the more exposure Palin got, the worse the choice looked.   

Some of the women being suggested as possible running mates for Biden don’t offer the kind of resumes vice presidential candidates historically present.  They’ve only served as state legislators, been mayors, or briefly held

congressional seats. Only one or two have foreign policy experience. We know the paper resume doesn’t mean everything, but it has some importance.

Compatibility:  Are They on Same Page?

We had different ways of putting this point, but the more we thought about it, the easier reconciling our views became. All three of us think the president and vice president must  unify on policy, with the vice president strongly advocating the president’s agenda, even if she disagrees internally. Biden has said, based on his experience in flying right seat for Barack Obama for eight years, he wants someone who will dissent within the councils of the White House, but will go out and push for whatever final decision he makes. 

This presents more of a problem than might appear at first glance. Lyndon Johnson was miserable as vice president because of the way the Kennedys cut him out of a meaningful policymaking role. He was never an effective spokesman for the New Frontier. Former president Bill Clinton and James Patterson, in their bestselling novel The President is

Missing,  present a vice president with resentments and a separate agenda that, for a time, appeared to threaten the nation. Biden should pick a team player and treat her as such. 

Restorative Capacity: Putting the Country Back Together

Even if the coronavirus hadn’t ravaged the nation’s health and its economy, any Democrat elected in 2020 would face a monumental job in restoring the country's moral authority. Diminished respect for the

rule of law, broken foreign alliances, mistrust based on ethnicity and hyper partisanship represent just some of the intangibles a new administration will face. The pandemic won’t have gone away by January 2021. A new vice president may have a big role in helping with the remaining economic and public health consequences.

Woodson says he wants a vice presidential candidate who can “relate to a broad coalition of people.” The vice president will need that capacity in helping Biden restore America’s place

and standing in the world. She must help the president bring together a cross-section of America in support of the reclamation project the next administration must undertake.

Our criteria ask a lot of potential vice presidents, but we don’t think we ask too much. Biden, if he wins, will have a big job. The woman on his wing will have a lot to do. 

 

     

 

AMERICA’S MOON ANNIVERSARY: BIG IDEAS AND BIG STEPS, PAST AND FUTURE

This week marks the 50^th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. On July 16, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin lifted off aboard Apollo 11, powered by the mammoth Saturn V booster. On July 20, Armstrong guided the spidery lunar module Eagle to a harrowing landing on an orb withonly one-sixth of the earth’s gravity. Armstrong and Aldrin left Eagle and explored the Sea of Tranquility while Collins orbited above in the command ship Columbia. Eagle’s successful lunar liftoff and rendezvous with Columbia led the astronauts home for a tumultuous global welcome.

        Left to Right: Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin and launch of Apollo 11                   

Numerous books and television documentaries are out commemorating thelanding. Some relive the mission while others generally celebrate the American space program. One book that focuses on the political and leadership story behind Apollo 11 caught our attention. In American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, historian Douglas Brinkley details how presidential leadership made the lunar landing possible. He highlights two critical points about Apollo 11: (1) it evolved from a person possessed with big ideas, and (2) it spawned unanticipated technological advancements. 

JFK’s Audacious Pledge

President Kennedy addressed Congress May 25, 1961, telling lawmakers he believed the United States should commit itself to, “before this decade is out,” landing a man on the moon and  returning him safely to earth. At the time, the United States had 15 minutes of manned space flight experience – Alan Shepard’s suborbital ride in his Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft 20 days before. While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hierarchy cheered Kennedy’s bold approach, many wondered how they’d accomplish such a task.

Brinkley demonstrates they succeeded because of Kennedy’s leadership skills and

Kennedy & Johnson

unwavering devotion to the idea the United States could accomplish big goals if it focused on the task and devoted the needed resources. Kennedy (and Vice President Lyndon Johnson) worked tirelessly in getting the needed funding. Kennedy also provided the rhetorical lift that kept the nation’s eyes on the prize. That included his famous September 1962 Rice University speech in which he said, “…we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills….”  

President Kennedy speaking at Rice University September 12, 1962

A huge incentive for the American space effort lay in Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. It wasn’t always certain the Soviets were racing the United States to the moon. Knowing that, Kennedy nevertheless made clear if there was a race, the United States couldn’t lose.

         

Landing on the moon, and Kennedy’s success in steering America toward that milestone, showed small thinking, wavering, and inconsistent dedication in pursuit of goals won’t cut it. Like Moses’s commitment to lead the children of Israel from more than 400 years of bondage, it hadn’t been done before. There was no template. Moses was simply committed to its attainment. Apollo achieved its objective despite opposition from both congressional budget cutters and activists who preferred spending the program’s $25 billion cost on human needs. Kennedy’s big project did face obstacles. 

Was it Worth it?

After 30,000 hours of simulations, the United States won the race to the moon. No one has been  back since the last American flight in 1972. But the benefits of Apollo continue. Even if NASA was just a consumer of Tang, not its inventor as the popular myth goes, space exploration offered humankind massive everyday benefits. Consider some advances Brinkley names:

• HIGH ENERGY METAL FORMING PROCESSES;
• DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNIQUES FOR USING LIQUID OXYGEN IN STEELMAKING;
• DEVELOPMENT OF COATINGS FOR TEMPERATURE CONTROL IN BUILDINGS;
• DEVELOPMENT OF EFFICIENT SYSTEMS FOR TRANSFORMING CHEMICAL ENERGY INTO ELECTRICAL ENERGY;
• IMPROVEMENTS IN MEDICAL EQUIPMENT LIKE THE MRI;
• DEVELOPMENT OF NEW COATINGS FOR PLYWOOD AND FURNITURE;
• IMPROVEMENTS IN METALS, ALLOYS, AND CERAMICS; AND
• DEVELOPMENT OF RADIATION MONITORING INSTRUMENTS. 

This list barely scratches the surface. We learned, from the moon rocks, about the age of the solar system. We didn’t even mention computer technology, a field that got a major boost from space exploration. Other things influenced that industry, but spaceflight played a big part in improving computing systems.

             

              The Sun and planets

Big Ideas – Small ideas

Landing on the moon during the 1960s was a big idea. In 1961, when the Soviets launched the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, andremembering that in 1957 they put up Sputnik, the first satellite, Kennedy wondered what the U.S. could do that would “leapfrog” the Soviets. Brinkley provides an entertaining look into how Kennedy’s team arrived at the moon-landing-within-the-decade idea as the way of accomplishing that. Kennedy thought big. He wanted his people thinking big, something we have far too little of today. America now appears anxious only for incremental advances. 

Kennedy’s marshalling of America’s political, scientific, and managerial resources for the moon mission makes us ask what big idea the United States could take on and conqueror today. Many reasons explain the small thinking that now dominates – fear of big government, tax cut mania, partisan bickering, concern one group might get too far ahead of another. We know, however, America doesn’t lack big problems it could tackle. Climate change. Immigration. Racial justice. Income inequality. Poverty. Cancer. They’re all out there, waiting for the people and the right President. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before.