Inaugural Speech of President Joe Biden
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Inaugural Speech of President Joe Biden
The primary documents that present the American story in the words of the people who wrote them have been essential in the country’s steps since attaining its independence more than two centuries ago. Most of such speeches have been stored, and they are from religious leaders, politicians, philosophers, civil rights leaders, and other prominent personalities in the United States. Students in the United States and other parts of the world read the artifacts and have access directly to the minds of those people who shaped the history of the United States. Such stories address what has hailed the United States from the time it gained its independence to date.
The speeches shape and assist in addressing the problems that America faces. Such problems include racism, extrajudicial police killings, and unequal opportunities, among other atrocities. In his inaugural speech, President-elect Joe Bidden explains the country’s atrocities and proposes ways of dealing with them (Cavaghan, 2017). President Biden addresses the unity of all Americans, controls the coronavirus, establishes the good reputation of Americans abroad, and that this is the time to heal America of the ills that it suffers from.
The themes addressed in the speech include; uniting Americans, battling to achieve racial justice to root out systemic racism in the country, saving the planet against climate change, and securing healthcare. In his speech, “…to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time. The battle to build prosperity, the battle to secure your families health care, the battle to achieve racial justice and root systemic racism in this country, the battle to save the climate, and the battle to restore decency, defend democracy, and give everybody in this country a fair shot.”
The barriers and advantages include attitudes, beliefs, and other problems that Biden, who is the rhetor, must overcome in persuading Americans to accept his positions. The advantages represent the attitudes, beliefs, or other positions that make the rhetor able to convince and persuade the audience. The President’s critics are keen to identify the rhetorical barriers and advantages that the President uses to convince Americans to accept his strategies. In his speech, he encounters barriers and advantages that are different. Such include barriers or advantages that are related to the audience. Whether they are in support of the rhetor or not, the audience’s mindset shows barriers and advantages, respectively. Such barriers and advantages are categorized based on attitudes, beliefs, and values. President Bidden has given beliefs that he wants to use to change Americans’ lives and make the country a better place to live in; the beliefs are testable
facts.
On the other hand, attitudes are evaluations of the belief and the attitude; for example, it is the President’s strategy to save the planet against climate change. This attitude is based on the belief that climate change is problematic to live on earth both for humans and other life forms. On the other hand, values represent the basic principles, right and wrong, good and bad. Values are more basic versions of attitude, and in the United States, President Biden supports such values as freedom, peace, prosperity, progress, and scrapping out racism (Ambitions, 2020). Beliefs can be changed with ease since they are based on factual understanding. Since President Biden has enough time and information on what ails the United States, he can convince Americans to change their beliefs on racism, national unity, and others alike, which is an easy process for the President-elect. Change of beliefs can be very easy when something was done that made the people suffer in the past, like President Trump’s approach in handling the coronavirus pandemic.
The other type of rhetorical barriers or advantages is attached to the situation where the rhetoric is attached. Situational barriers may relate to various cultures. America is a national of different cultures, and members of those different cultures have different expectations from the President and how he handles his entire plan. The complexity of the rhetoric may also pose a rhetoric advantage or barrier to the President. His stand on nuclear power to make the country energy efficient to lower carbon emissions and scrap out climate change needs him to convince Americans and the rest of the world on the complex issue. It is advantageous for him because Americans understand the difference between nuclear power and weapons; therefore, it is easier for the President to convince them how nuclear power can fight against climate change to save the planet (Rhodes, 2020). In some instances, complexities become advantages since political leaders become like congressmen and women may support complicated positions to avoid taking actions in solving major problems such as Biden’s stand in healthcare.
Since Biden’s reputation as a senator has been known to most of his audience, the barriers and advantages of the audience’s perceptions towards the President make the rhetoric. The audience understands the President’s service for the country’s love; he has seen the ills affecting the country, so his recommendations will easily become advantages to the Americans who are the audience.
First and foremost, considering the strategies used, the President-elect addresses issues to deal with racial injustice and how worst it costs the nation. He vows to do all he can to root out racism from the country. Racism has existed in the United States from the colonial era and has involved practices of law, attitudes, and actions which have discriminated against some groups based on their race or ethnic grouping. The white Americans have enjoyed social and legal privileges and rights denied to minority groups such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Jews, among other minority groups (Lewis, 2020). European Americans have enjoyed several advantages, including voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, bankruptcy, and criminal procedures throughout America’s history.
African Americans have faced restrictions based on politics, social relations, and economic freedoms throughout much of their history. The Native Americans have experienced genocide, forceful evacuations, and massacres and still face discrimination in modern times. The Hispanics have been racially discriminated against even though they have European ancestry. Racism has been a way of oppression in the United States and developed by members of one race in prosecuting another race. Racism has been witnessed in the United States, and the Black Lives Matter is a way to shun it. There have been massive protests across the United States after the death of George Floyd.
President Joe Biden has assured Americans that his administration will be inclusive and that people will not be defined based on red states or blue states; black, white, or Latino Americans will be the United States of America with full and equal rights. This is verified by his appointment of Kamala Harris, who has made history as the first woman, the first black woman a daughter of an immigrant elected as vice president in the United States history. He explains that the United States has gone a notch higher and recognized those who sacrificed their lives to make racial recognition happen in the nation’s history.
The President-elect presented his strategies in tackling climate change, which has been described and proven to be most ambitious than any US presidential candidate in history. The environment correspondents have considered what he wants to do and how he may have it done. He has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement designed to prevent global warming of the entire planet. Since President Trump pulled out of the deal after Obama signed it in 2016, Biden has confirmed that he will reverse the decision as President of the United States of America. He has laid down strategies to reduce carbon emissions at the local level.
President proposes to make the United States be electricity production hub with carbon-free emissions by 2035 and targets that the country should reach zero-emission towards the middle of the century. It implies that carbon emissions get balanced by planting more trees to absorb the emitted carbon to reach net-zero. The President wants to heavily spend on driving the emitted carbon by having millions of buildings upgraded to make them energy efficient. He also wants to revolutionize the transport sector by heavily investing in electric vehicle manufacturing plants and establishing charging points to offer consumers incentives to manufacture environmentally friendly cars. The strategies will create more job opportunities putting most Americans to work. President Biden has also warned that he won’t allow fracking done on federal land due to the environmental impact that is accompanied by it.
On healthcare, President Biden assured to reverse the current trend. He has strategies for investing in affordable healthcare. He said he wanted to invest trillions of dollars in fighting coronavirus strategies heavily during the inauguration. He wants to work with Congress in creating an insurance plan for Medicare, which is inclusive to everyone and calls it a public option. In battling to secure health care, Biden wants to enroot the Affordable Care Act in which the Supreme Court has heard a series of cases on the constitutionality of the Act, which was known as the Obama care.
Though the court decision may not come out soon, the Bidden Administration may seek to make the case against the law moot. If the Supreme Court overturns the law, the Congress may fail to make the deal, then the President, together with the Congress, will have to work faster to establish another way of addressing the possibilities of millions of Americans who last their medical insurance in the middle of the pandemic. The president-elect says he wants to rebuild the law by addressing the fact that the premiums of ACA are not affordable. The current laws provide that federal premiums subsidies for every household make up to almost 400% of the federal level of poverty. Biden’s plan will ensure that the subsidies are expanded to include people that make a lot of money than that. He will reverse most of the ways the Trump administration tried to undercut.
He confirms that he will restore and increase funding to outreach consumers of ACA to help its sign-ups. The most crucial change he wants to be done to ACA is to create Medicare-like programs which will be for public options, that is a health insurance program which is governed by the federal government the same way Medicare is, but will be accessible to people of any age and will favorably compete with the private insurance plans that exist in the same market. The idea was part of ACA in its original setting, which, unfortunately, never made it into the final stage of becoming law. Medicare, which is the public option, is significantly less expensive than the current insurance plans (Evans, 2020). This is because of the government’s leverage, which drives down the prices of doctors’ visits and hospitals’ cares.
The President is deemed to succeed since Americans have had a lot of faith in his service to the nation, and his actions as vice president convinced millions of Americans that he is optimistic about making the United States a good country to live in. his strategies extends to the global conservation to save the planet from the harsh human activities that have led to climate change which has made millions of lives to be lost as a result of floods and droughts across the world, the United States included. His healthcare position remains an advantage since Americans from all walks of life need to have insurance in health care that is universal and serviced by the federal government. He wants to re-introduce the Obama care, which he initiated together with Barrack Obama in their administration, which President Trump scrapped off. He understands that Americans have been heavily hit by the coronavirus pandemic and has put in place a strategy to deal with the pandemic in a way that will make America defeat it. Uniting Americans and making Americans have equal opportunities is one of his strategies, and he says whether African American, Latino, Blue States, or the Red States, they remain to be the United States of America. Healing America implies the fight against the ills that the country has faced since independence. Such ills include racism, police killings, terrorism, and disease.
In conclusion, in his inaugural speech, President Biden convinces Americans that he has been elected and tasked by the majority of Americans to serve them and save the planet from the helms of climate change. He is clear that he wants to heal the country from the pain it has been experiencing over time and calls for every American, those who voted for him or not, to unite and propel the country forward. His is out to fight racism that is battling to achieve racial justice and rooting out systemic racism from the United States’ face. He wants to save climate change and secure healthcare (Biden Jr, 2020). He wraps them up and says the battle to restore the soul of America.
References
Cavaghan, R. (2017). Bridging rhetoric and practice: New perspectives on barriers to gendered change. Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 38(1), 42-63. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1554477X.2016.1198209
Ambitions, E. U. (2020). Green COVID-19 Recovery and Transatlantic Leadership: What Are the Prospects?. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep26633.pdf
Rhodes, B. (2020). The Democratic Renewal: What It Will Take to Fix US Foreign Policy. Foreign Aff., 99, 46. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/fora99&div=120&id=&page=
Lewis, J. I. (2020). Toward a New Era of US Engagement with China on Climate Change. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 21, 173-181. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/766400/summary
Biden Jr, J. R. (2020). Why America must lead again. Foreign Affairs. http://www.deutsch-chinesisches-forum.de/images/thinktank/20201114/Why%20America%20Must%20Lead%20Again.pdf
Ferguson, M. (2020). WASHINGTON VIEW: The Biden education plan. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(1), 46-47. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0031721720956877
Evans, E. J. (2020). Postelection: Where Do We Stand on Health Care?. Health & social work. https://academic.oup.com/hsw/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/hsw/hlaa022/5957469