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      Why Republican Voters Think Americans Have to Get Over Jan. 6

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      This article is the result of a focus group we held with Republican voters about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the health of American democracy. You can also read the article about our Democratic voter focus group on the same issues here. Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, expands on the takeaways from the focus groups and the intent behind them here in the Opinion Today newsletter.Former President Donald Trump may be popular in the Republican Party, but his conduct during the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6 earned poor marks and stood out as a troubling memory during a discussion among eight G.O.P. voters in a Times Opinion focus group this week.This transcript of the discussion — part of a new series of Opinion focus groups exploring Americans’ views on issues facing the country — offers a more nuanced portrait of Republican voters and their concerns about American democracy than the typical image of the pro-Trump party base in lock step with the former president. The Times convened this focus group, as well as a separate focus group with Democrats, to pose the same questions in hopes of showing how different voters see the events of last year and where they disagree or overlap.Some of the Republicans said Mr. Trump could have stopped the attack on Jan. 6 sooner and others blamed him for egging on his supporters. At the same time, several of the Republicans repeated Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud and traded in other unfounded claims, including about the Jan. 6 riot, news coverage and a Democratic push for Covid-related restrictions to supposedly ensure more mail-in balloting in future elections.As is customary in focus groups, our role as moderators was not to argue with or fact-check the speakers. Listening to some of the Republicans rationalize their support for the president, and in some cases justify the mob violence at the Capitol, may offer insights into what makes them vote the way they do, and believe what they believe. It’s only by understanding that can we move toward a better, clearer understanding of our fellow citizens.Two veteran focus group moderators, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero, led the Republican and Democratic discussions respectively. (Times Opinion paid them for the work; they do similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.)This transcript has been edited for length; an audio recording and video clips of the session are also included. As is common with focus groups, the speakers’ last names are not included.Kristen Soltis Anderson: What are some of the biggest things that you remember happening in 2021?Gayle (from Florida): The vaccine. More and more people getting vaccinated.Judi (from Oklahoma): The economy started to go bad.Barney (from Delaware): The price of everything going up, and we’re back to $50 fill-ups.Matt (from Tennessee): Betty White was the final thing that 2021 was able to take from us.Lorna (from Missouri): A lot of the concerts were canceled. They managed to pull off the Rolling Stones coming here, though. I didn’t go. I didn’t want to be around all them people.Joshua (from Ohio): The social justice movement growing from 2020, definitely.Judi: The great divide our country is in. With our new president and with issues with the vaccine. There are people that are all for it. There are some that will not even talk about it or take it, even look at it.Sandy (from California): The vaccinations — you have to show your card. It’s almost like we’re having our civil rights taken away.Kristen Soltis Anderson: When I say “Jan. 6,” I want to hear from each of you what the first word is that comes to mind.Barney: Way overblown.Judi: Scary.Joshua: Misrepresented.Lorna: One of the guys that was arrested, my mom worked with. It’s ridiculous the way they came out and searched his house.Gayle: Definitely Trump and MAGA and CNN.Sandy: Blowing out of proportion.Kristen Soltis Anderson: In your own words, what happened on Jan. 6? How would you describe what happened?Matt: I would say civilians stormed the Capitol building in an unwarranted fashion.Gayle: Many people that were upset with how the election turned out and didn’t feel that Biden won fairly and wanted to, I guess, do some damage.Jill (from Maine): People trying to take control because they felt like somehow they were wronged with the election.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want you to think about how you felt when you first heard about what had happened on Jan. 6, how you felt. A show of hands, did anybody feel angry?[Matt and Jill raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about upset?[Jill, Matt, Lorna, Judi and Barney raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about ashamed?[No one raises a hand.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: Ambivalent?[Gayle raises her hand.]Gayle: I kind of feel like, on one hand, you had a few bad apples in there, and then you had other people who truly were just trying to express their feelings of the election, and they didn’t feel that the outcome was right. So I don’t know what the intent was initially.Republican Focus Group on Jan. 6 and DemocracyPatrick Healy: How important do you think Jan. 6 was in American history? Just thinking about other major events in American history, Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor.Jill: I think it’s very important, and it’s much different than the other Pearl Harbors and stuff because it was Americans turning on Americans. It wasn’t somebody else doing damage. It was us doing damage to ourselves.Sandy: It doesn’t really faze me. I mean, these Black Lives Matter people back in 2020 — that was the whole summer. You don’t hear anybody talking about that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Barney, I believe when I was going around and asking people to give one word, I believe you said “overblown.” Where do you see something like Jan. 6 in the scope of American history?Barney: I’ve lived in Washington. And if you do like you’re supposed to do and get your permits and get security, there’s very peaceful demonstrations with millions of people, and nothing happens. And nobody listened to the warnings saying there’s people coming. So it’s not a Pearl Harbor. It’s not a 9/11. It’s Jan. 6, 2021, and it’s just another day. Every day, if you live in Washington, you turn on the news, you hear “Jan. 6” 100 times a day. And if you go out to Oklahoma, you don’t hear it. So it’s where you are and what you hearGayle: People don’t talk about it. The issues that we’re dealing with right now, it’s Covid and inflation and the supply chain issues. It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican. So I don’t know if it’s something that might eventually be in history books.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Were there any things that anybody was saying or doing that made what happened on Jan. 6 more likely to occur the way it did?Judi: People were saying that the states wanted to recount the votes because they saw fraud.Jill: I would say Trump. Trump saying he lost the election, it was stolen from him, over and over and over again. And I think a lot of people were just getting very angry about it, feeling like the election was stolen.Joshua: Trump’s speeches and his Twitter.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to know if you think there’s anything that President Trump could have done or should have done to prevent the escalation and what happened on Jan. 6?Judi: I don’t think you should have had that rally with all the people, with all the protesters. I think he just got everybody more ticked off.Gayle: I think he could have stopped it earlier somehow. I remember watching it on TV and going, ‘What the hell is going on right now?’ And I was like, ‘Where is Trump during this?’ And that was the only thing that kind of came to mind in that moment, was Trump’s got to come in and do something about this. But he wasn’t, and that was a concern of mine.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Based on what you’ve heard and your impressions of President Trump, what do you think was going through his mind when he was seeing all of this on television?Barney: He wasn’t very happy. For sure. Because Trump’s people don’t act like that. A lot of these people were professional antagonists. I’ve lived in D.C. my whole life. They like to do it.Sandy: People coming in there and storming and causing a ruckus didn’t achieve his goal.Judi: His followers were not like that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to show you — this is a text from Donald Trump Jr. when he was texting with chief of staff Mark Meadows, where he said: “He’s got to condemn this ASAP. Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” Laura Ingraham: “Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He’s destroying his legacy.” Sean Hannity texting about this as well. Does this surprise you at all or not so much?Gayle: That is very surprising to me because they’re saying what you would think almost a Democrat would say or a liberal would say.Lorna: Kind of shocking to me. You’d think they’d back the president.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How do you think Vice President Mike Pence handled everything on Jan. 6? Is there anything that you wish the vice president had said or done differently that day?Sandy: I think he could have postponed the verification of the votes. To this day, there’s still recounts going on.Judi: No, I think he was stuck in the middle. I think he didn’t want to make waves, and I think he really didn’t have a choice.Gayle: He was stuck. I’m sort of stuck, myself, in thinking maybe he could have done more. But I don’t know what else he could have done other than to back Trump up.Patrick Healy: A show-of-hands question: How many of you believe Joe Biden won the election fair and square?[Jill raises her hand.]Patrick Healy: And how many of you believe Trump really won the election?[All but Jill and Matt raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Judi, you made a point at the beginning about your concern about the great political divide in the country. Do you think that Jan. 6 contributed to that political divide, or do you think other factors contribute to that divide?Judi: I think it has a lot to do with the divide. Because there’s people like us. We feel that Trump should have won. Trump won the election. And there are others that will say no, Biden won fair and square. And that’s what’s dividing this country between the Republicans and the Democrats. I mean, even more so. I mean, really, really dividing us.Gayle: I think the country has been divided especially since Trump went into office in 2016. It didn’t matter about his policies anymore. It just had to do with his personality that people hated so much. I never heard of it in such an extreme manner than I did — until 2016 — throughout his presidency. And I’ll be quite frank with you. I don’t think he should run again. It’s a mistake for him to run. If he runs, every Democrat is going to just vote Democrat just to not keep Trump in.Patrick Healy: Can I ask for a show of hands: How many of you would like to see President Trump run again in 2024?[Judi, Joshua and Lorna raise their hands.]Joshua: Under Trump, for most of his term — having our economy be great. Getting back to that.Patrick Healy: Barney, could I ask you why you didn’t raise your hand?Barney: His show’s over. We definitely need some new blood at the head of the country and different types of leaders. I mean, this divide among the parties is getting really crazy, crazy. And living where I do, I mean, it’s just every day. And I used to think it was really bad when George Bush II was president. I mean, no matter what he did, he got criticized. If you got a flat tire, it was Bush’s fault. Trump, no matter what, he couldn’t do anything. The Washington Post food critic, because [Trump] likes his steak well done, criticized him for that. What he likes.Patrick Healy: How many of you voted for President Trump in 2020?[Six raise their hands; Joshua and Jill do not.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: In the days that followed Jan. 6, a number of prominent Republicans came out and said they were upset with what had happened and that they were upset with the way Trump had handled the situation. You had Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy say, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” You had some members of the White House staff and some members of President Trump’s cabinet who resigned in protest. Why do you think they came out and said that?Matt: Absolutely save face with their constituency.Judi: I don’t think they were honest, and I think they should have backed him regardless. I mean, you’re Republican or Democrat. You should back your president, and they didn’t. They didn’t back him. And that’s why I’m kind of — I’m going independent now.Barney: Politicians don’t do anything unless it’s for their own best interests. They don’t do it for you or me. They do it for them. So they’re always covering their butt all the time.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I think, Barney, you may have mentioned people coming in from other places. Who is antifa? Where are they coming in from, in your view?Barney: I think there’s groups around the country that just — they’re professional hell-raisers, and they like to poke the bear. And they’re funded by, maybe, other countries. I’m not sure. I don’t know. Or maybe by Soros. But they’re always there, and they’re always in front.Gayle: From what I understand, a lot of them are on college campuses, and they recruit that way. So they’re recruiting young folks, people that are new to — are very open-minded, and maybe they’re just looking for some sort of community, some sort of group that they can be a part of.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to take a step back. How would you characterize the health of our democracy? Healthy? Fair? Poor? Critical condition? I want to get a show of hands. How many of you think our democracy is “mostly healthy”?[Sandy raises his hand.]Sandy: Shake it off. Things happen in life. Quit being a wuss.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Any hands for “fair” condition?[Barney and Jill raise their hands.]Barney: You can make a lot of things happen, if you have the right influence and the right amount of cash. I don’t think it’s good, but the way our country was set up is not like it is today. We’ve gone way, way, away from that.Jill: I think the basic theme is still there. I think people are still good, whether Republican or Democrat, and they’re still looking to work towards the good. They want to make things better.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How many of you would say you think our democracy is in “poor” condition?[Five raise their hands.]Gayle: We still have rules and laws that we have to abide by. However, we do have freedom of speech, although sometimes I don’t know about that anymore.Judi: So far.Gayle: So far. Who knows? It’s more about the mandates and the lockdowns and these requirements that the federal government is now making us do, as opposed to giving more of that freedom back to the people or to the states. To me, democracy was based on having the constituents make decisions. It’s not about the federal government taking over and controlling everything. That’s why you see a lot of people now leaving their jobs, because they don’t want to get the vaccine, and yet they’re mandated to do it. So it’s a problem. I’m very happy and very fortunate to be living in Florida, by the way, because I didn’t go through a lot of these mandates and lockdowns that were required.Joshua: I would say that the government looks for events like Covid-19 as ways to usher in the “New World Order” and just have everything be more socialist.Patrick Healy: I want to ask specifically about the next presidential election, the 2024 presidential election. Are you concerned at all about the losing party, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, trying to steal the election after the fact?Barney: I think every election from now on is going to be like that.Lorna: They’re already talking about the mail-in ballots with Covid. You know where that’s going to go.Sandy: Yeah. It’s like they’re coming up with these — the right to vote thing. I’ve never been turned down to vote. Just show up and go vote. But this whole mail-in ballot thing? I think that should end right away.Gayle: I’ll be quite frank: I think that the reason that they push Covid so much is because they’re going to try to keep the mail-in ballots. I think that they are putting the fear in people so that they can push Covid as long as possible for 2024. It’s all about control, and they’re keeping Covid as one of their biggest weapons.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I have one final question. It’s probably the case that 100 years from now a historian is going to be writing a book about the 2020 election, and they’ll have a chapter on Jan. 6 and what happened. What would you want those historians, 100 years from now, to know about how you think about Jan. 6?Matt: They would hopefully write that the process still stood strong. It did what it was supposed to do. Regardless of whether or not it was tested — the process was still the process, and it didn’t need to be rewritten because of some hurt feelings.Joshua: About how the news was just trying to get out the story as fast as they could have and not worrying about the facts, just changing everything as they went on.Barney: I hope they include both sides of the story and all the players involved.Lorna: How the Democrats invaded the White House.Gayle: I guess it would come down to what is a fair election. People just didn’t feel that the election was fair. What is the proper way to vote, I think, is really what I would say to write about.Jill: It started off to be people expressing their opinion in a peaceful way, got out of hand, turned into a little bit of mob mentality, and things just got out of control in a way that normally wouldn’t happen.Sandy: Yeah. It was no Boston Tea Party, so I don’t think it’ll be a big event in a history book. But people stood up for what they thought. More

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      Jan. 6, Part 3: The State of American Democracy

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      Rachel Quester and Robert Jimison and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherIn the United States, the transfer of power is built on the expectation that candidates and their allies follow the process peacefully and with a degree of grace.After the election on Nov. 3, 2020, peace and grace were not forthcoming from President Donald J. Trump’s side.Mr. Trump and his allies tested the limits of the election system, launching pressure and legal campaigns in competitive states to have votes overturned — all the while exposing the system’s precariousness.Although the efforts weren’t successful, they appear to have been only the beginning of a wider attack on American elections. In the final part of our Jan. 6 coverage, we explore the threats to democracy that may come to bear in the next election.On today’s episodeAlexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.The Capitol Building at sunrise on Thursday, a year after the riot.Al Drago for The New York TimesBackground readingThe fight over American democracy and the fragility of good faith: Times political journalists talk about the Republicans’ push to restrict voting and seize control over elections, and how Democrats are responding.Here are four takeaways from the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Alexander Burns contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens and Rowan Niemisto.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda and Maddy Masiello. More

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      On Jan. 6 Anniversary, Biden Goes After Trump and Trumpism

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      In a speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol riot, the president confronted Trumpism, even as he refused to utter his predecessor’s name.WASHINGTON — For most of his first year in office, President Biden has bet that he could move the country past the divisiveness of his predecessor by restoring a sense of normalcy to the White House, practicing the traditional brand of politics he learned over decades in the Senate and as vice president — and largely ignoring the man he refers to as “the former guy.”It didn’t work.So on Thursday, Mr. Biden put aside his hopes of no longer having to engage directly with Donald J. Trump and went aggressively at him, using an impassioned speech in the Capitol to make clear the urgent necessity of confronting Mr. Trump — and Trumpism.“We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the house, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said from National Statuary Hall.“What did we not see?” he continued. “We didn’t see a former president who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s capitol under siege.”Later, Mr. Biden was even more blunt, even as he refused to utter Mr. Trump’s name. “He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext, to cover for the truth,” he said of Mr. Trump’s lies about election fraud. “He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.”The extraordinary moment, in which a sitting president accused his predecessor of holding “a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy,” marked a sharp pivot in Mr. Biden’s strategy for dealing with Mr. Trump and his continuing promotion of the baseless assertion that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.The president’s speech tacitly acknowledged that his predecessor, far from fading away, remains the most potent force in Republican politics and a credible rival to Mr. Biden in 2024. And for Mr. Biden, who throughout the last year has articulated the importance of promoting democracy over autocracy around the world, it also signaled his willingness to confront more directly the challenges Mr. Trump poses to democratic values at home, which have shown little sign of dissipating in the year since a violent mob tried to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s election victory.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?The approach has its risks, not least in providing Mr. Trump with better opportunities to hit Mr. Biden with broadsides of his own — an opening that Mr. Trump seized on Thursday with a series of angry statements accusing the president of supporting “open borders,” “unconstitutional mandates” and “corrupt elections.”But continuing to ignore his predecessor carries real peril for Mr. Biden as well. Recent polling suggests that millions of Americans are at least somewhat willing to tolerate or support political violence against partisan opponents.Republican-controlled states are considering or enacting restrictions on voting rights. Supporters of Mr. Trump are seeking to control the machinery of elections in key states, potentially giving them the power to block an outcome they oppose. Substantial majorities of Republicans in polls say they believe the results of the 2020 election were illegitimate.Mr. Trump’s influence over the Republican Party remains strong — he is trying to be its de facto kingmaker and he is polling as its front-runner for the 2024 presidential election. His false statements on election fraud continue to divide Americans. Last month, the two presidents shared a rare occurrence: commending each other. In an effort to address vaccine hesitancy among many Trump supporters — unvaccinated Americans are disproportionally Republican — Mr. Biden praised the previous administration’s work on coronavirus vaccines, prompting Mr. Trump to express gratitude.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol and has even criticized Mr. Trump by name on a few occasions. Yet before Thursday, he had never as president taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods, or the Republicans who have enabled him.“He values power over principle,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interest, and America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution.”Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, said returning to a contentious tit-for-tat would only alienate Trump supporters the administration was hoping to vaccinate.“We can save millions of lives globally, but when we tear each other apart like we did on Jan. 6, the damage can be irreparable,” Mr. Luntz said.Since his inauguration, Mr. Biden has repeatedly condemned the violent assault on the Capitol but had not taken such a direct, aggressive tone against Mr. Trump and his falsehoods before Thursday.Al Drago for The New York TimesIt was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s willingness to take on Mr. Trump so directly signaled a lasting shift in messaging or a one-off driven by the exigencies of the anniversary. Mr. Biden was described as deeply involved in the preparation of the speech and determined to make sure that it took on not just the mob but the former president who inspired it.At the same time, however, Mr. Biden wanted to avoid signaling that he had given up on bipartisanship altogether and gave himself a rhetorical escape hatch by including a line declaring that he “will always seek to work together” with those Republicans “who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man.”Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      4 Takeaways From the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Commemoration

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      WASHINGTON — This anniversary of Jan. 6 marked a turning point for President Biden, who for much of his first year in office avoided direct confrontation with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.On Thursday, Mr. Biden took deliberate aim at Mr. Trump, assailing him for watching television as the attacks unfolded, spreading a lie that the 2020 election was rigged, and holding “a dagger at the throat of America” when he encouraged his supporters to attack the United States Capitol.But Mr. Biden held on to one vestige from the past year: He still refused to call Mr. Trump by name.Here are four takeaways from the day.Biden takes a new, confrontational approach to Trump.As president-elect in November 2020, Mr. Biden and his staff proceeded with the transition process by treating Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election as little more than histrionics.The calculation made back then by Mr. Biden and his advisers was that America was simply ready to move on, but on Thursday, the president was more willing than usual to address Mr. Trump’s claims, calling him a loser in the process.“He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election,” Mr. Biden said. “There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate.”His remarks set him down a more confrontational path with Mr. Trump, who holds a firm grip on his party and shows no sign of backing down from continuing to perpetrate a false narrative about the 2020 election. It is a development Mr. Biden spent his first year in office avoiding, but one that he seemed to embrace as a matter of necessity on Thursday.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Biden rejects working with Republicans who support ‘the rule of a single man.’On his Inauguration Day just under a year ago, Mr. Biden promised to be “a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.” On Thursday, he appeared not as the peacemaker president but as a leader who had a warning for Americans who attacked the Capitol in service of Mr. Trump.“I did not seek this fight brought to this Capitol one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either,” Mr. Biden said. “I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”Mr. Biden also reserved some of his ire for elected officials. For a leader who came into office speaking poetically about the art of bipartisanship — “politics is the art of the possible,” he said early on — and about the need to heal a fractured nation, Mr. Biden suggested that he was only interested in working with Republicans who have not tied their political fortunes to the falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump.“While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else,” Mr. Biden said. “But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible.”Trump — and Trumpism — is not going away.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, center left, and Representative Matt Gaetz, center right, during a news conference in Washington on Thursday.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe president’s remarks presented a stark choice: “Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” In corners of the internet governed by Mr. Trump and his supporters, the answer seemed clear.On a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump aide who was indicted in November for failing to comply with congressional investigators, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia deflected blame for the attack and suggested it was part of a government conspiracy.In his own cascade of statements, Mr. Trump showed no sign that he was going to shrink from a fight. He assailed Mr. Biden for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even the way he delivered his Thursday remarks.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Democrats Are Failing to Defend Democracy

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      When it comes to elections, the Republican Party operates within a carapace of lies. So we rely on the Democrats to preserve our system of government.The problem is that Democrats live within their own insular echo chamber. Within that bubble convenient falsehoods spread, go unchallenged and make it harder to focus on the real crisis. So let’s clear away some of these myths that are distorting Democratic behavior:The whole electoral system is in crisis. Elections have three phases: registering and casting votes, counting votes and certifying results. When it comes to the first two phases, the American system has its flaws but is not in crisis. As Yuval Levin noted in The Times a few days ago, it’s become much easier in most places to register and vote than it was years ago. We just had a 2020 election with remarkably high turnout. The votes were counted with essentially zero fraud.The emergency is in the third phase — Republican efforts to overturn votes that have been counted. But Democratic voting bills — the For the People Act and its update, the Freedom to Vote Act — were not overhauled to address the threats that have been blindingly obvious since Jan. 6 last year. They are sprawling measures covering everything from mail-in ballots to campaign finance. They basically include every idea that’s been on activist agendas for years.These bills are hard to explain and hard to pass. By catering to D.C. interest groups, Democrats have spent a year distracting themselves from the emergency right in front of us.Voter suppression efforts are a major threat to democracy. Given the racial history of this country, efforts to limit voting, as some states have been implementing, are heinous. I get why Democrats want to repel them. But this, too, is not the major crisis facing us. That’s because tighter voting laws often don’t actually restrict voting all that much. Academics have studied this extensively. A recent well-researched study suggested that voter ID laws do not reduce turnout. States tighten or loosen their voting laws, often seemingly without a big effect on turnout. The general rule is that people who want to vote end up voting.Just as many efforts to limit the electorate don’t have much of an effect, the Democratic bills to make it easier to vote might not have much impact on turnout or on which party wins. As my Times colleague Nate Cohn wrote last April, “Expanding voting options to make it more convenient hasn’t seemed to have a huge effect on turnout or electoral outcomes. That’s the finding of decades of political science research on advance, early and absentee voting.”Higher turnout helps Democrats. This popular assumption is also false. Political scientists Daron R. Shaw and John R. Petrocik, authors of “The Turnout Myth,” looked at 70 years of election data and found “no evidence that turnout is correlated with partisan vote choice.”The best way to address the crisis is top down. Democrats have focused their energies in Washington, trying to pass these big bills. The bills would override state laws and dictate a lot of election procedures from the national level.Given how local Republicans are behaving, I understand why Democrats want to centralize things. But it’s a little weird to be arguing that in order to save democracy we have to take power away from local elected officials. Plus, if you tell local people they’re not fit to govern themselves, you’re going to further inflame the populist backlash.But the real problem is that Democrats are not focusing on crucial state and local arenas. The Times’s Charles Homans had a fascinating report from Pennsylvania, where Trump backers were running for local office, including judge of elections, while Democrats struggled to even find candidates. “I’m not sure what the Democratic Party was worried about, but it didn’t feel like they were worried about school board and judge of elections races — all of these little positions,” a failed Democratic candidate said.Democrats do not seem to be fighting hard in key local races. They do not seem to be rallying the masses so that state legislators pay a price if they support democracy-weakening legislation.Maybe some of the energy that has been spent over the past year analyzing and berating Joe Manchin could have been better spent grooming and supporting good state and local candidates. Maybe the best way to repulse a populist uprising is not by firing up all your allies in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.The crisis of democracy is right in front of us. We have a massive populist mob that thinks the country is now controlled by a coastal progressive oligarchy that looks down on them. We’re caught in cycles of polarization that threaten to turn America into Northern Ireland during the Troubles. We have Republican hacks taking power away from the brave state officials who stood up to Trumpian bullying after the 2020 election.Democrats have spent too much time on measures that they mistakenly think would give them an advantage. The right response would be: Do the unsexy work at the local level, where things are in flux. Pass the parts of the Freedom to Vote Act that are germane, like the protections for elections officials against partisan removal, and measures to limit purging voter rolls. Reform the Electoral Count Act to prevent Congress from derailing election certifications.When your house is on fire, drop what you were doing, and put it out. Maybe finally Democrats will do that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republicans and Democrats Come Together to Remember Senator Isakson on Jan. 6

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      ATLANTA — On a day when Washington’s partisan divide felt as deep as it has in decades, lawmakers from both parties gathered in an Atlanta church on Thursday to honor one of the U.S. Senate’s great champions of bipartisanship, Johnny Isakson.Mr. Isakson, a moderate Georgia Republican who once called bipartisanship “a state of being,” was 76 when he died on Dec. 19, having retired prematurely from the Senate in 2019 because of health complications. He was battling Parkinson’s disease.In Washington on Thursday, most Republican legislators refused to take part in the commemorations of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. But they came together at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, to honor Mr. Isakson.Among the attendees were Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrat who was elected to Mr. Isakson’s old Georgia seat last January.Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, delivering words of remembrance, acknowledged that the funeral resonated in a spirit of comity that the Senate was once known for, but that has lately become more scarce.“I haven’t seen this big of a bipartisan group of Senators together off the floor since September,” he said. That, he said, was the date of an annual, “Johnny Isakson barbecue lunch,” a social tradition that Mr. Isakson started and that lawmakers have continued in his absence.Former U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, an old friend of Mr. Isakson’s, also delivered remarks, noting that in his farewell speech to the Senate, Mr. Isakson said that he divided the world into two categories: friends and future friends.Mr. Chambliss recalled that Mr. Isakson also quoted Mark Twain’s advice to do the right thing, on the grounds that “It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”Mr. Isakson held firm conservative beliefs, opposing the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage, but he also bucked the party’s status quo at times, and he was not afraid to publicly criticize Mr. Trump.Along the way, he made numerous friends in both parties; Mr. Chambliss said that former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, a Democrat, once quipped, “If all Republicans were like Johnny Isakson, I would be a Republican.”The pews were packed with friends and admirers from both parties, including Mr. Barnes. The top statewide elected officials in attendance included Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both of whom are facing tough primary challenges from pro-Trump challengers.A folk duo underscored the tone with a rendition of “Let There be Peace on Earth.” When they sang “God Bless America,” the mourners stood up en masse. More

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      Companies Donated Millions to Those Who Voted to Overturn Biden's Win

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      One year after the Capitol riot, many businesses resumed corporate donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying the 2020 election.WASHINGTON — At its annual summit on the state of American business last January, officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce expressed disgust at the siege of the Capitol that had unfolded days earlier, and declared that lawmakers who discredited the 2020 election would no longer receive the organization’s financial backing.“There are some members who, by their actions, will have forfeited the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Period. Full stop,” Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer for the chamber, said at the time.Less than two months later, the nation’s biggest lobbying group reversed course. “We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification,” Ashlee Rich Stephenson, the chamber’s senior political strategist, wrote in a memo.In the year since the riot at the Capitol, many corporate giants and trade groups have moved from making stern statements about the sanctity of democracy to reopening the financial spigot for lawmakers who undermined the election. Millions of dollars in donations continue to flow to what watchdog groups deride as the “Sedition Caucus,” highlighting how quickly political realities shift in Washington.A report published this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group, showed how corporate money continued to support most of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results.In the last year, 717 companies and industry groups gave more than $18 million to 143 of those lawmakers. Businesses that pledged to stop or pause their donations to those lawmakers have since given nearly $2.4 million directly to their campaigns or leadership political action committees, according to CREW.Many of the corporations that have donated are household names, including Boeing, Pfizer, General Motors, Ford Motor, AT&T and UPS. Trade groups such as the Chamber of Commerce have also continued to be big donors, with such associations, or their political actions committees, giving $7.67 million to political groups associated with lawmakers who voted to overturn the election or to PACs that support them.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?To be sure, many companies have kept their word and maintained their pause on donations. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership at the Yale School of Management, said his own research showed that a majority of corporations that pledged to slow or cease their PAC donations to election certification objectors had followed through with those promises.According to the CREW report, more than half of the nearly 250 companies that said they would evaluate their political giving after the attack have not made a donation to the lawmakers who tried to stop the certification of the election. Microsoft has held firm on its pledge to cease donations to those lawmakers, and Hewlett-Packard decided to shut down its PAC entirely after Jan. 6.But many companies have restarted campaign donations, with some saying they are doing so in the spirit of nonpartisanship.“Our employee PAC program continues to observe longstanding principles of nonpartisan political engagement in support of our business interests,” said Trent Perrotto, a spokesman for the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which contributed $145,000 to 72 lawmakers who voted against certifying the election.Sharon J. Castillo, a Pfizer spokeswoman, said in a statement that “following the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the company adhered to its commitment to pause political giving to the 147 members of Congress who voted against certifying the election for six months.” She added that “monitoring elected officials’ conduct and statements is a part of our governance process, and we will continue to do so as we consider future Pfizer PAC disbursements.”CREW noted that some lawmakers who had downplayed the riot or sought to sow doubts about what happened on Jan. 6 had continued to be magnets for corporate money. Representative Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican who has blamed Democrats for instigating the violence and has called those taken into custody in connection with the riot “political hostages,” received $2,000 in donations from the National Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors and the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative Fund.Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican who has said there is no evidence that an “armed insurrection” took place, received $1,000 from the National Association of Insurance & Financial Advisors.In the immediate aftermath of the riot, associating with lawmakers who appeared to abet it was viewed by many companies as a political liability. But in many cases, those concerns did not last.Charles Spies, a Republican campaign finance lawyer who helped run Mitt Romney’s presidential super PAC, said that while the initial shock of the attack made corporate donors risk-averse, their thinking shifted with the politicization of the Jan. 6 congressional inquiry. Republicans have sought to downplay the attack and have accused Democrats of using the investigation to hurt the G.O.P.’s image.“It’s now a bit more politicized, which makes it harder for companies to just pick one side,” Mr. Spies said.As a House committee continues its inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot, many Republicans have argued that the investigation is politically motivated.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMelissa Miller, a Ford spokeswoman, justified the carmaker’s donations by explaining that they were not driven by a single issue.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      How the Capitol Riot Led to a Broken America

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      “Things feel broken.”Those weren’t the first three words in a recent article in The Times by Sarah Lyall about our pandemic-frazzled nerves. They weren’t the fanciest. But they seemed to me the truest — or, rather, the truth of our moment distilled to its essence. This country isn’t working, not the way it’s supposed to.Oh, it’s functioning, with a mammoth economy (which distributes wealth much too unevenly), an intricate transportation network (about to improve, thanks to infrastructure legislation) and the historically swift and heroically expansive delivery of vaccines to Americans rooted firmly enough in truth to accept them.But in terms of our democratic ideals? Our stated values? Our basic contentment?We’re a mess, and the pandemic mainly exposed and accelerated an ugliness already there. Would the violence at the U.S. Capitol a year ago today have happened in the absence of Covid closures and fears? Maybe not then. But we were headed there before the first cough.The anniversary of the Jan. 6 rioting has rightly focused attention on the intensifying efforts to undermine our democracy, but it should also prompt us to contemplate the degradation of the country’s civic spirit and the foulness of its mood.That’s part of what Jan. 6 symbolized, and that’s what Sarah’s article was about. It specifically examined customer freak-outs and meltdowns, but those bespeak a nastiness and selfishness that go hand in hand with disrespect for the institutions and traditions that have steadied us. The attacks on democracy are inextricable from the collapse of decency.In my final newsletter of 2021, I pushed back against many Americans’ pessimism, noting that when I look at spans of time greater than the past few months or years, I see trajectories of improvement, arcs of hope. I still see those, and I believe that we can — and should — leaven any upset over, say, the shortfall of Covid tests with bedazzlement at the fleet development of vaccines. As a country, as a species, we’ve still got plenty of juice.But it’s erratically channeled. It’s squandered. And it often can’t compete, not these days, with potent currents of anger. Regarding those currents, another passage in Sarah’s article grabbed and stayed with me. “In part, the problem is the disconnect between expectation and reality,” she wrote, paraphrasing what a consultant had told her.The consultant was addressing the consumer experience, but that assessment can be upsized and applied to the American experience. One of our glories as a country is how high we tell everyone to reach, how big we tell everyone to dream. But that’s also one of our predicaments. A land of promise will invariably be a land of promises unkept.There’s too little joy at present. In its stead: recrimination, rancor and indecency — which is the prompt for this reflection and the pivot to a plea. As we begin and lurch through a new year, can we recognize that the best way to fix what’s broken isn’t with a sledgehammer? The rioters at the Capitol lost sight of that. The rest of us mustn’t.For the Love of SentencesPanta PetrovicOliver Bunic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn part because of the holiday break, “For the Love of Sentences” hasn’t appeared since mid-December, so today’s installment will be a bit longer than usual, to accommodate nominations that stretch back that far. Without further ado:“When I read about the Serbian hermit Panta Petrovic this summer, I liked him immediately — even as I understood that he, being a misanthropic hermit, would not like me back,” wrote Jon Mooallem in The Times. “For starters, the man looked the part: 70 years old, smudgy-cheeked and virile, with a beard fanning off him like the bottom of an old broom, rope for a belt and white sleeves blousing from a tattered brown vest. Aesthetically, he resembled a fiddler on the roof without the fiddle. Or the roof.” (Thanks to Lynne Sheren of Greenville, N.Y., and Vipan Chandra of Attleboro, Mass., for the nomination.)Sticking with The Times, here’s Pete Wells, our restaurant critic, on a new British steakhouse in Manhattan: “One of Hawksmoor’s great attractions, though, is its custom of writing out the names and weights of other, larger cuts available that day on chalkboards posted around the dining room. These stretch from bring-your-rugby-teammates gigantic, like a 54-ounce rib chop, to condemned-prisoners’-last-meal huge, like a 38-ounce chateaubriand, on down to slabs of meat that you could conceivably eat by yourself if you could take the next day off to lie very quietly on the couch like a python.” (Christine Fischetti, Aspinwall, Pa.)Here’s the science writer Dennis Overbye on a special magnifying glass for the cosmos: “Sitting in a spaceport in French Guiana, wrapped like a butterfly in a chrysalis of technology, ambition, metal and wires, is the biggest, most powerful and, at $10 billion, most expensive telescope ever to be launched into space.” (Nina Koenigsberg, Manhattan)Here’s David Segal describing one of the people in his article about a Dickensian workhouse in London becoming — of course! — luxury apartments: “Mr. Burroughs, a 77-year-old chartered accountant, speaks carefully and barely above a whisper, as if he were narrating a golf tournament.” (Sharon Green, Owings Mills, Md.)Here’s Gail Collins, from her weekly online “Conversation” with Bret Stephens: “Registering as an independent is like telling a charitable fund-raiser that you want to help by sending good thoughts.” (Paula Diamond, Amagansett, N.Y.)Bret differed. “I’m happy as an independent,” he wrote. “It’s like getting to order à la carte, whereas everyone else is stuck with a bento box of things that don’t actually go together.” (David Calfee, Lake Forest, Ill.)Bret also confided, regarding 2021: “I had such high hopes for the year, Gail. Melania and Donald would slink quietly out of the White House, she in couture, he in ignominy.” (Christine Sheola, Ithaca, N.Y.)Moving on to The New Yorker: Calvin Trillin examined the art of the lede — that’s journalistic jargon for an article’s opening words — by reproducing an epically packed one from a Louisiana newspaper’s account of a woman biting a camel. (Yes, you read that correctly.) “Notice,” Trillin observed, “how the reader is drawn in with a single unpunctuated sentence that starts slowly and gradually becomes an express train that whistles right by the local stops without providing an opportunity to get off.” (Steve Estvanik, Seattle, and Laurie Caplan, Astoria, Ore., among others)Here’s Jenny Turner, in The London Review of Books, on Hannah Arendt: “She wrote polemical essay-columns, in German at first, for the German-speaking New York Jewish press, and then in the spirited, sardonic English of a beer-hall fiddler who hasn’t forgotten her old life in the string quartet.” (Roman Kadron, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.)In The Guardian, Catherine Bennett opined that despite all the damage that Covid has done, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, “has treated masks as if they were a lefty plot against his face.” (Marilyn Wilbanks, Ellensburg, Wash.)In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank sized up the current state of gerrymandering: “Thanks to a breathtaking abuse of redistricting in G.O.P.-controlled states, all but an unlucky handful of members of Congress will henceforth be exempt from listening to those god-awful whiners called ‘voters,’ spared those bothersome contests known as ‘elections’ and protected from other disagreeable requirements of ‘democracy.’” (Valerie Congdon, Waterford, Mich.)Finally, a headline — we allow the occasional extraordinary one into the “For the Love of Sentences” sanctum. It appeared atop a review of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” by A.O. Scott, one of The Times’s movie critics: “The Thane, Insane, Slays Mainly in Dunsinane.” (Bonnie Friedman, Pukalani, Hawaii, and Laura Day, Wheatland, Mo.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.What I’m Reading (and Have Written)Joan Didion in 1968.Julian Wasser/Time Life Pictures, via Getty ImagesJoan Didion’s death on Dec. 23 prompted many excellent appraisals of her work. One that particularly intrigued me was in The New Yorker, by Zadie Smith, who sagely noted and corrected many faulty assumptions about Didion. I wrote my own reflection on Didion’s early essays and how they pioneered a radical transparency in journalism. As it happens, I previously sang Didion’s praises, in this column from 2017.Another major loss: Betty White, at 99, last week. I got to spend a few hours with her a decade ago, for this feature. And here’s the audio from my 2011 interview with her onstage in Manhattan for the TimesTalks series.The conviction of Elizabeth Holmes on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud prompts me to resurface this column of mine from 2019 about her dreams and schemes in the context of both American history and this particular American moment.Although this hilariously irreverent obituary of Renay Mandel Corren, written by her son Andy and published in The Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina, went viral, I mention it anew just in case you missed it and its assertion that there “will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in: McKeesport, Pa., Renay’s birthplace and where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism; Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, N.C., where Renay’s dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried; and of course Miami, Fla., where Renay’s parents, uncles, aunts and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere are all buried pretty deep.” That’s pretty much the tone from start to finish. (Gail Lord, Santa Ana., Calif., and Priscilla Travis, Chester, Md., among others)Few political profiles have an opening as wild and memorable as Olivia Nuzzi’s take on Mehmet Oz in New York magazine does. The whole article is worth reading.So, in a different vein, is this beautifully written reflection by Honor Jones, in The Atlantic, on ending her marriage.Also in The Atlantic, James Parker’s appraisal of the new, nearly eight-hour documentary “The Beatles: Get Back” is a smorgasbord of spirited prose, which is par for the Parker course. (Kristin Lindgren, Merion Station, Pa.)Another keeper: Jon Caramanica, a Times pop music critic, eulogized his mother through his memories of going to concerts with her. “More than anyone, my mother — who died late last year — gave me music,” he wrote. “She gave me the idea that there was freedom, or identity, to be found within.” Jon added that nothing “will strip your varnish quite like watching someone you love wither. It made me tentative, as if any wrong move on my part might put her in peril.” (Paul Geoghegan, Whitestone, N.Y., and Ross Parker Simons, Pascagoula, Miss.)On a Personal NoteBarack Obama with his father.Obama For America via Associated PressIn a newsletter in early December, I mentioned that I’d begun reading, and was enjoying, the latest novel by Amor Towles, “The Lincoln Highway.” I didn’t finish it until last week: Deadlines, holiday commitments and more got in the way. Also, I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to make it last.Only in its final stretch did I fully appreciate one of its principal themes: the degree to which none of us can escape our parents.Oh, we can get away from them physically, if that’s what we very much want or need. But emotionally? Psychologically? For better or worse, I don’t think we’re ever free.I have friends who readily tick off the ways in which they’re unlike their mothers or fathers, as if to prove how little their parents have to do with them. But that cataloging — that consciousness — is the very evidence of their parents’ enduring presence, no less potent for them than for friends who dwell proudly on the values that their parents instilled in them. Whether attracted by their parents’ example or repelled by it, all of these daughters and sons are using the same point of reference. They’re measuring themselves with the same yardstick.I’ve been stuck by the especially pronounced stamp left by parents whose sons have reached most intently for the presidency or attained it. (I say “sons” because the sample set of daughters remains much, much smaller, though I hope not for long.) Those men’s relationships with their fathers, in particular, fascinate me.Look at the title of Barack Obama’s initial memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” Look at his predecessor George W. Bush, who tried so hard not only to match but also to exceed his father: He would get that second term; he would drive deep into Iraq, topple Saddam Hussein and remake the Middle East. Look at Bill Clinton, whose father died while his mother was still pregnant with him. What a hole that left. What a hunger that fed.I wrote at greater length about the paternal shadows cast on presidents in a column in 2014, so there’s no need for more of that now. Besides, those presidents are just amplified versions of most of the rest of us, who are destined to try to live up to or live down the people who produced us. To prove them right or wrong about us.Some of the unkind assessments that my parents made of me — throwaway remarks in most instances — are like inerasable chalk on the blackboard of my memory. But some of their more abundant expressions of faith also remain there, and if they’re fainter and smudged, well, that’s on me. All those words, all those judgments: They’re like the operating instructions for my personality. They explain how it works.And among the reasons that “The Lincoln Highway” moved me is how it brought all of that to the surface. For its main characters, the actions and inaction of parents aren’t just details from the past. They exist as gravity does — a grounding force, a constant pull. More