“I know it’s been hard. I truly know. As I’ve told you before, I carry a card in my pocket with the number of Americans who have died of COVID to date. As of now, the total deaths in America: 527,726. That’s more (American) deaths than in World War One, World War Two, the Vietnam War and 9/11 combined.”
President Joe Biden cited this grim statistic less than a minute into his first prime-time television address to the American people on March 11. For a nation whose leaders are renowned for their tendency to engage in boosterism and elevate the positive – even in the face of unspeakable calamity – these words must have given many viewers a feeling akin to being dunked over the head with a bucket of cold water.
A SHIFT IN TONE TOWARDS THE SOMBER
Large portions of the nearly 12-minute speech that followed were likewise notable for their somber tone and refusal to shy away from the frank admission that what the nation has experienced over the past 12 months has been nothing less than an avalanche of intense human suffering.
The President was very specific in his enumeration of the sorrows gripping the nation, as the following excerpts attest:
“Photos and videos from 2019 feel like they were taken in another era…we all lost something. A collective suffering. A collective sacrifice. They were husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandparents, friends and neighbors…They leave behind loved ones unable to grieve or truly heal, even to have a funeral.”
“But I’m also thinking of everyone else we lost this past year to natural causes, by cruel fate of accident, or other diseases. They too, died alone. They too, leave loved ones behind who are hurting badly.”
“Weddings, birthdays, graduations – all the things that needed to happen, but didn’t. It all has exacted a terrible cost on the psyche of so many of us. The things we used to do that filled us with joy have become the things we couldn’t do and broke out hearts.”
This is all very downbeat stuff. And this recitation of griefs occurred in the first five minutes of his address. There was still plenty of bad news to share with viewers, not least the rise in violent attacks on Asian Americans.
President Biden clearly set out to meet his fellow citizens at the place they are now: a palpable low point. There was no sugar-coating things on Thursday night. None at all.
AN UNSPARING ACCOUNT, MIXED WITH REAL HOPE
The sorrowful notes of the president’s speech were all the more striking because Mr. Biden was actually able to share a fair amount of good news on Thursday evening. Vaccinations are up. Vaccine production is accelerating. Drug companies have joined forces under the Biden Administration’s aegis to produce greater quantities of vaccines. The public at large can now expect to be fully vaccinated by the middle of June, if not sooner.
These are genuinely hopeful developments for a nation that has suffered one-quarter of global coronavirus deaths since the pandemic began. All are particularly welcome at the end of a winter like none other in living memory, a winter in which many Americans never left their residence for more than a weekly trip to the drug store or supermarket. Three-and-a-half months of elevated anxiety paired with crushing boredom.
Why then should the president not ‘elevate the positive’ and in so doing, elevate his poll ratings?
THE POLLS BE DAMNED
It doesn’t appear that President Biden is paying much attention to the polls. The annus horriblis of 2020 demonstrated yet again that polling isn’t much of a science, and pollsters can’t be trusted. Better to lean into one’s agenda and let the public react as it will. In a nation so divided, the best any U.S. President can hope for these days are approval ratings in the mid-50s. Mr. Biden already has that going for him — so why worry?
Based on Thursday night’s speech, the president also doesn’t seem much concerned about winning over the public with dulcet tones. He seems to believe that Americans’ spirits are at such a low ebb following a winter of death, illness, isolation, and sundry catastrophes (the Texas blackouts come to mind) that they are in a mood for blunt words. They would rather that those in authority leveled with them rather than spinning cheery tales or deflecting their failures onto other people.
That President Biden is so intensely attuned to people’s emotional lives is without a doubt a function of his personal history. He was very open about it on the campaign trail last year: Mr. Biden is no stronger to sorrow. After having lost a wife, a daughter and a son to the harsh vagaries of Fate, the president knows what it feels like to have your heart broken more than once. And he is not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. He is no stranger to sorrow.
What a difference from our last president! Donald Trump might audition for the role of “the Tin Man” were he ever to find himself in the Land of Oz.
The question is: How will this go over with the American public, both in the short and the long-term? Will his candor boost his standing as a truth-teller, or make him into a second Jimmy Carter, oft-mocked for his 1979 “malaise” speech (so called) about the 1970s energy crisis.
IT TAKES TIME TO PROCESS TRAUMA
I haven’t seen the latest poll numbers yet, but I doubt that they will amount to more than the proverbial “warm cup of spit”. If Greymantle were to take a stab at how President Biden’s first televised address was received by the public, he would guess that it was received pretty well.
Americans are long since ready to put the pandemic behind them, but they are not yet ready to move on from the emotional fallout, from the personal heartache.
People were suffering from a variety of social ills before the pandemic struck. The coronavirus highlighted those ills with grim clarity: loneliness, economic insecurity, mistrust of institutions, weak community ties, racial prejudice and distrust, and a bewildering array of addictions (to technological applications perhaps the worst of all).
It’s going to take time for Americans to process what they’ve experienced – probably several years. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the damage done by months of isolation and paranoia are going to remain evident, particularly for the young. Americans will have to confront these scars. They have to be willing to talk about it.
SEEKING A ‘MOURNER IN CHIEF’
At the time of the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, then-President Bill Clinton was dubbed by the media the nation’s “mourner in chief”. This seems to be a mantle that Americans like the president to doff during periods of national shock, at least since the Age of Television began. Mr. Clinton was relatively well-suited to the role: he was good at projecting emotional, particularly empathy and concern.
My view is that Mr. Biden is even better-suited to the role of ‘mourner in chief’ than ever Mr. Clinton was. President Clinton always had one eye on his poll numbers, and he shed plenty of crocodile tears. By contrast, Mr. Biden is able to express sorry and sympathy in a way that is far more heart-felt and genuine than any of his recent predecessors.
Judging by President Biden’s first prime-time address on Thursday evening, he plans to firmly occupy that role. A nation with no shortage of heartaches may soon learn to appreciate it.
Until next time…
