This is an adapted excerpt from MSNBC’s Jan. 15 special coverage of President Joe Biden’s farewell address.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden delivered his farewell speech to the nation. During my time in the White House, I was there for many Biden speeches. I helped the president prepare for them. And I can tell you, this was not a traditional Biden speech.
A more traditional Biden speech would have started with a listicle of accomplishments, which is what many of us may have expected from Wednesday’s remarks. Instead, the president started out with a lengthy analogy about the Statue of Liberty withstanding a storm:
Like America, the Statue of Liberty is not standing still. Her foot literally steps forward atop a broken chain of human bondage. She’s on the march. And she literally moves. She was built to sway back and forth to withstand the fury of stormy weather, to stand the test of time because storms are always coming. She sways a few inches, but she never falls into the current below.
We can assume the storm Biden referred to there is Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
Biden didn’t promise the American people that the government — the Supreme Court, Congress, the president — will protect them from the storm, instead, he told the American people they’ll have to protect themselves. With this speech, Biden didn’t pass the baton to his successor, as he would likely do if it were any other politician, he passed the baton to them.
To that end, the last few lines of the president’s speech were, perhaps, the most striking. Biden told the American people that it’s their turn “to stand guard.”
It’s a message that meets the moment. As he laid out, an oligarchy is taking shape in America. In the next administration, the leaders of tech companies and billionaires will likely have unfettered access to the Oval Office. The Supreme Court is dealing with an ethics crisis.
Biden’s final message to America was that we cannot count on these people to protect us. We have to protect ourselves, all of us, and the institutions that make America what it is.
Allison Detzel contributed.
