Joe Biden ran jauntily on to the stage, wearing a black face mask but suddenly looking several years younger. Looking, in fact, like millions of Americans felt, with burdens to bear but a spring in his step.
The new US president-elect offered a Saturday night speech that did not brag or name call, did not demonise immigrants and people of colour, did not send TV networks and social media into meltdown and did not murder the English language.
After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.
Donald Trump’s performative populism revealed a Biden-shaped hole that America never knew it had. It has been widely noted that the unthinkable losses he endured in his long life made him the right person at the right time for a grieving, coronavirus-ravaged America.
But his political setbacks also strike a chord as a model of perseverance, an everyman who had shrugged off life’s disappointments and kept smiling. His runs for president in 1988 and 2008 crashed and burned, and when Barack Obama failed to encourage him to try again in 2016, that appeared to be the end of the road.
Instead he came back for one final act that rendered him the hero of his own story, not a supporting player in someone else’s. Biden proved not to be a Salieri to Obama’s Mozart. It was a victory for solid, unspectacular strivers everywhere. Such humility is essential at this moment of division. It produces magnanimity rather than crowing over the losing side.
“For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of times myself,” he said wryly. “But now, let’s give each other a chance.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again. Listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They’re Americans.
“The Bible tells us to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”
Joe Biden ran jauntily on to the stage, wearing a black face mask but suddenly looking several years younger. Looking, in fact, like millions of Americans felt, with burdens to bear but a spring in his step.
The new US president-elect offered a Saturday night speech that did not brag or name call, did not demonise immigrants and people of colour, did not send TV networks and social media into meltdown and did not murder the English language.
After the mental and moral exhaustion of the past four years, Biden made America sane again in 15 minutes. It was an exorcism of sorts, from American carnage to American renewal.
Donald Trump’s performative populism revealed a Biden-shaped hole that America never knew it had. It has been widely noted that the unthinkable losses he endured in his long life made him the right person at the right time for a grieving, coronavirus-ravaged America.
But his political setbacks also strike a chord as a model of perseverance, an everyman who had shrugged off life’s disappointments and kept smiling. His runs for president in 1988 and 2008 crashed and burned, and when Barack Obama failed to encourage him to try again in 2016, that appeared to be the end of the road.
Instead he came back for one final act that rendered him the hero of his own story, not a supporting player in someone else’s. Biden proved not to be a Salieri to Obama’s Mozart. It was a victory for solid, unspectacular strivers everywhere. Such humility is essential at this moment of division. It produces magnanimity rather than crowing over the losing side.
“For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight. I’ve lost a couple of times myself,” he said wryly. “But now, let’s give each other a chance.
“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again. Listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans. They’re Americans.
“The Bible tells us to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”