Watching President Biden deliver a speech is akin to watching a children’s play. The performance flows poorly, he frequently stumbles, and the lines are written by someone else. Unlike a child, however, President Biden holds the most powerful office in the world. Thus, despite his dismal oratorical skills his performances are still worth watching.
Perhaps the most important speech of his career occurred on January 15 when he delivered his Farewell Address to the Nation. During these remarks, presidents often attempt to solidify their legacy by highlighting their accomplishments and providing a vision for the future. Given his terrible performance as president, Biden’s speech assumed even greater importance. His goal should have been to deliver a vague and inspiring speech. Vague in order to avoid any mention of his faults and inspiring in order to make it memorable.
The first half of the speech adequately accomplished this goal. President Biden began with a description of the Statue of Liberty and its metaphorical relationship to the soul of our country. Compared to other speeches, the imagery wasn’t particularly moving, but the speech stayed on course.
After this introduction, the president briefly and vaguely catalogued the accomplishments of his administration. He avoided talk about the border, mentioned the economy only once, and claimed that “we’ve pulled ahead of our competition with China” whatever that might mean. Up to this point, the speech went smoothly. President Biden had very few stumbles and his speechwriters didn’t make any errors in judgment.
It was in the final section of his speech, however, that the president revealed the divisive and radical character of his presidency. Far from resting content with a list of his supposed accomplishments, the president felt he needed “to warn the country of some things that give me great concern” and thereby set a tone for the future.
Seeking to channel the energy of Theodore Roosevelt, President Biden warned the country that an “oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” Rather than ending on a note of unity the president sought to promote class conflict. Quite ironic from a man who recently gave George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Then, in an attempt to emulate Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Biden warned of a tech-industrial complex that allows Americans to be “buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power.” Because “Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” The president clearly referred to Elon Musk’s acquisition of X and Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to stop biased fact-checking on Meta. As he leaves the presidency, Biden hopes to once again seize the means of informational dissemination for the Democratic party.
Furthermore, he called for a radical infringement on the separation of powers through a restructuring of the Supreme Court. According to the President “We need to enact an 18-year time limit — term limit — time and term — for the strongest ethics ref- — and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court.”
Now that the Court interprets the Constitution according to its original meaning, the Democratic party wants to radically alter the judicial branch. Republicans never made a similar push despite the Supreme Court’s indulgence of liberal prejudices for 60 years. President Biden frequently accused his opponent of loving his country only when he won, but it seems that he is much more guilty of that charge.
Indeed, President Biden’s call for more governmental centralization was the climax of his speech. Far from inspiring Ameircans to unite with one another he engaged in a demagogic attempt to foster class conflict and degrade the rule of law. Joe Biden’s acrimonious exit serves as an analogy for his public life; vain, unprincipled, and morally bankrupt.
