Terry Prone: Biden takes a stand against MAGA extremist threat to US democracy

US President, perhaps because he’s been in politics for so long, understands the power of a single, carefully staged speech

Joe Biden staged his speech outside outside the historically-significant Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

When US President Joe Biden makes his first major speech warning about a threat to democracy, the expectation would be that Fox News would rubbish it and CNN would not; CNN wouldn’t necessarily praise the speech, but they’d take it seriously.

In the event, their White House correspondent John Harwood delivered on that expectation. “The core point made in that political speech about a threat to democracy is true,” he told the camera, going on to redefine the discourse in the US, pointing out that journalists there are “brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view, and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them. But that’s not what we are talking about. These are honest disagreements. [However,] the Republican Party right now is led by a dishonest demagogue.”

Just one day later, John Harwood was no longer in any position to address the CNN camera. He was out. Gone. Fired. It’s unclear if CNN’s new management, in position since April, canned him because of what he had said, since they’ve announced a return to more traditional, less opinionated coverage, or if he delivered the statement as a result of knowing he was on his way out, having been earlier sacked, but one way or the other, he was gone.

The reflex response of any good liberal to this is to be outraged at CNN moving to the right.

But, since all reflex responses should be questioned, it’s worth questioning this one, however satisfying it may be. The fact is that Harwood used the jargon of one group in society, in the process articulating a personal viewpoint which, arguably, would not be fully understood by the majority of his viewers. Therein lies a major, global communication problem with manifest and manifold consequences.

Liberals who spent the last two decades condemning conservatives and creating laws and regulations to constrain the behaviours of the socially conservative operated on the assumption that the groups Hillary Clinton named as “the deplorables” would eventually see the light and start talking and behaving the way liberals would like them to speak and act. Instead, the deplorables became more deplorable, right up to and including the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, 2001.

Yet liberals who consider themselves open-minded continued, in podcasts, columns, newsletters and on social media, to not only demonise the extreme right, but do so in terms unlikely to be understood by their targets. Sad that none of them heed Christopher Paolini’s line that “no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.”

Joe Biden’s speech last week set out to do more than demonise the extreme right. It was a nuanced, thoughtful oration, carefully staged: the work of a man who had been flummoxed by what happened in January and had mulled over the possibility of making a major input throughout the spring and summer. That input ran sharply against the inclusivity characterising much of Biden’s public and private words.

Cynics might suggest that its utterance was motivated by Biden’s lousy poll ratings, but that’s to miss the reality that those ratings, in common with those of the Democrats, have actually improved in recent months. Cynics within his own party would suggest that he has been too passive and that it was about time he used the bully pulpit of the presidency with some force.

Power of speech

Biden, perhaps because he’s been in politics for so long, understands the power of a single, carefully staged speech. Social media creates sudden transient storms. TV and radio provide talking points for a few days. But a forceful speech is a statement of position, a framing of the national or international argument, a halting of the noise and Biden’s was one forceful speech.

The staging was forceful, too. He was spotlighted outside the historically-significant Independence Hall in Philadelphia with uniformed Marines on either side and two big Stars and Stripes flags behind him. The outdoor staging had its downsides, which were audible as people in the crowd heckled him, although Biden managed to make a point, congruent with the rest of his speech, about the hecklers. They were entitled to be outrageous, he pointed out, because this is what is permitted in a democracy.

The tone was markedly different to his standard approach. Biden moved away from his usual one-of-you affability. This was a line-in-the-sand solemn statement that America was at a point of major change, “one of those moments that determines the shape of everything that comes after, and now America must choose to move forward or to move backwards”.

It was also cleverly judged as a vehicle to get to what might be called “traditional” as opposed to “Trump” Republicans; the kind of Republican who prides themselves as being always and forever on the side of law-and-order.

Biden didn’t tell them they were betraying their own ideals. Instead, he embraced them into something wider. 

“This is a nation that believes in the rule of law,” he told them, before addressing the threats against federal agents made after the FBI’s visit to Mar-a-Lago to locate top secret documents. 

His message was those threats disrespected law enforcement and could undermine precisely the faith in the enforcers which had always characterised the GOP. But it was so carefully crafted a message that it was only on second or third hearing it became inescapable. In much the same way, the speech made a powerful but not obvious appeal to women horrified by the removal of what they see as the basic right to abortion.

HE was at pains to create a distinction between what might be called, (although he did not so call them) “ordinary decent” Republicans, the kind he has always managed to work with in a bipartisan way, and the “MAGA extremists”. The distinction he delineated was between Trump-led extremists determined to take the United States backwards and other conservatives:

History tells us that blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy.

The performance had technical flaws, including the side-to-side reading of autocue which gives an audience a slight case of seasickness. Someone needs to train Biden to look at one of the autocue scripts, vacuum up a statement from it, and deliver that statement front and centre to the audience.

But since Obama never learned to do this, the odds that his successor will are small. That said, the president delivered the speech with unusual flowing confidence and authority, helped by the short sentences that made statements like this so magisterial: “For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it’s not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us.”