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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As our inauguration day coverage continues, we heard some excerpts from past inaugural poems in the previous segment in advance of todays by Amanda Gorman. How about some past inaugural addresses? How about from the beginning of the age of radio and its first American political master of the medium, a slightly well-known line from his inaugural address in 1933.

Roosevelt: First of all, let me assert my belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed effort to convert retreat into advance.

Brian: We played the second line, the line after fear itself because nobody ever hears it but it was really good. How about this from 1961, maybe equally as famous from near the beginning of the age of television and its first American political master of the medium.

Kennedy: My fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

[applause]

My fellow citizens of the world ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Brian: Man, we tacked on an additional sentence there too to, "My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." We'll play some more excerpts now and ask not what we can do for Biden's speech but what it can do for America with Jennifer Mercieca, professor of rhetoric and communication at Texas A&M University and author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. Professor Mercieca, thanks for joining us on inauguration day. Welcome to WNYC.

Mercieca: It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Brian: Do you want to start looking back to those Kennedy and FDR moments, were they so striking because they were new masters of new media or for other reasons too?

Mercieca: Oh, I think that both of those examples that you played were so striking because they spoke to the moment. That's what a great inaugural address will do it. It speaks to history. It lays out a plan for government and a vision of political power, but it also speaks to the moment itself. I think that that's something that we should expect to hear from Joe Biden today.

Brian: I see you tweeted, "Two of our greatest presidents, Lincoln and FDR followed two of our most calamitous presidents, Buchanan and Hoover. A crisis is an opportunity to lead good luck to President Biden who follows the most calamitous president." Did you meet say one of, let's see, you pluralize presidents.

Mercieca: [chuckles] I had some editing problems there.

Brian: We'll say either follows one of the most calamitous presidents in our history or the most calamitous president in our history. You could have meant either one but you want to make those historical comparisons?

Mercieca: Absolutely. Thanks for sharing my editing error. That was exactly my conundrum as I was writing the tweet. Is he the most calamitous or one of the most? I couldn't decide. Yes, absolutely. It's actually a fascinating thing if you think about the arc of history in the American presidency, is that the presidents that we remember as the most successful, as the greatest presidents, are those presidents who took office during moments of extreme crisis, the nation in duress. They followed a president who was calamitous, who made those crises worse, who failed to solve the problems of the nation. We think of George Washington as being one of the greatest presidents because, of course, he was the first president and so he emerged during a time of crisis and the nation pulling the nation together.

Then, of course, FDR and Lincoln following Buchanan and Hoover who were unable or unwilling to solve the problems facing the nation. I think that that's a very similar situation to what we have today. Donald Trump was a calamitous leader. He was a failure. Beset with problems, he failed to lead. He caused problems. He caused instability in a nation that was stable. Scholars who studied democratic erosion and democratic backsliding will remember Donald Trump as a major figure in causing democratic erosion in a stable democratic state. We've never had one of those before. Really Joe Biden has an opportunity to be a great president. It's a lot of pressure.

Brian: What would make a great inaugural address?

Mercieca: I think what we'll hear from him is hope, similar to what we heard from the FDR clip that you played. That there is hope for us here. I think that we'll also hear him make some really pragmatic statements. He's a pragmatic leader and I think hopeful pragmatism probably is right for this moment. I think that he will speak to the moment. Yesterday, he led us in a period of mourning and I think that that was necessary and useful. That's something that we haven't seen from President Trump, unfortunately, and it's something that the nation needed. We look to the president to play that role, as the sort of one nationally elected political figure. We look to the president to play what scholars call the priestly role of the president, which is to say, they call the nation together during moments of crisis. They speak to our values and they tell us how our values will get us through this crisis, how we can use our values to solve our problems. I think that we'll hear that from Joe Biden today as well.

Brian: We played those FDR and JFK clips which are so iconic and of course, this is an especially fraught and polarized moment but Richard Nixon also took office in a crisis amid war after a year of assassinations, calls for racial justice from that era, and yes, culture war polarization in 1969. Here are a few seconds of his first inaugural, addressing that moment.

Richard Nixon: We are caught in war, wanting peace. We're torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them. To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit and to find that answer, we need only look within ourself.

Brian: Professor Mercieca, we know how the Nixon presidency turned out but how would you analyze that speech for that moment and compare it to now?

Mercieca: I think that we'll probably hear a similar appeal because the situations are indeed similar. We call that using transcendent rhetoric, which means that it doesn't focus on our differences but it focuses on what we have in common, what unites us. That's a message that we've heard from Joe Biden for the last year. He's constantly talking about the fact that we actually aren't as divided as we seem. We all want the same things. We all want our kids to go to good schools. We all want clean air, drinking water that we can all drink. We all want the virus to go away. We all want the same things and that the divisions that we feel are manufactured. Somebody's benefiting from manufacturing, those divisions. I think Joe Biden's goal is to try to prevent that.

Brian: Listeners, what do you hope to hear until Biden's inaugural address today? (646) 435-7280. How much is healing on your mind as opposed to justice or relief or anything else that you want to hear him be articulate about or anything else for Jennifer Mercieca, professor of rhetoric and communication at Texas A&M University and author of a book about Donald Trump's first campaign called Demagogue for President and the rhetoric that he used? (646) 435-7280. Maria in Clifton. You're on w NYC. Hi Maria, happy inauguration day.

Maria: Happy inauguration day, Brian. Thank you.

Brian: What would you like to say? What do you want to hear?

Maria: Actually, I was reflecting on the last question you asked about what do I want to happen in the first day or on the first week but it relates to the second question as well. As a higher education scholar, as a Black woman, and as an activist, like Ayanna Pressley said, "Policy is our love language." A lot of people say that Black women saved Democracy this year which they did. As a thank you, as a reparation for racial economic inequality, I think the perfect solution is to cancel student loan debt. Black women carry higher student loan debt than any other racial-ethnic category. Due to the wage gap, they are less in a position of paying it back. If we want to really, really thank Black women, cancel the student loan debt immediately.

Brian: Goodwin Maria, thank you very much. I'll make you a promise, Maria, I'm going to bring that one up when we do our first national special tomorrow night. Kai Wright and I will be on together. Listeners, a heads up, we're going to be doing 15 of these on 15 consecutive Thursday nights at eight o'clock. This is part of our America, Are We Ready series. We’re going to be doing a weekly Thursday night show following the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. This will begin tomorrow night with Kai and me. At eight o'clock, we’ll be on public radio stations around the country and we will be talking a lot tomorrow night about how Biden comes out of the box on racial justice. Maria, since you framed student loan debt as an aspect of racial justice in the way you just did, I'm going to promise you that I'm going to bring that up that way tomorrow. Let's take another call. How about Joe in Pound Ridge? You're on WNYC. Hi, Joe.

Joe: Hi, Brian. Love your show. Long, long time listener. What I'd like Joe Biden to say with respect to unity is that he is proud that America has become more racially and ethnically and culturally diverse. That he will once again be welcoming to people from all corners of the globe.

Brian: Thank you very much, to the point. Nancy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nancy.

Nancy: Hi. Yes, good morning. The first thing that I would like for Mr. Biden is to select a special commission like they did with the 9/11 to investigate to the fullest what happened on January 6th. Also, they should declare a national holiday or a special day that we remember that day for years and years and years to come. All those people that committed that atrocity they can remember and we should never ever, ever forget that day. Thank you.

Brian: Nancy, thank you so much. Professor Mercieca, what do you think the options are for Biden in how he refers to January 6th today?

Mercieca: Well, I'm not sure if that would be appropriate for his inaugural address. He's called it an insurrection. He made it very clear that it wasn't a protest and I haven't heard him say anything different about that. I don't know that he will actually want to elevate that moment into his inaugural address. I suspect that the way that he hasn't really talked about Trump much throughout his campaign. He's ignored him. I feel like he'll do the same thing today.

Brian: Another historical inaugural clip, Ronald Reagan known as a master of speech giving here a few seconds.

Ronald Reagan: To a few of us here today, this is a Solomon most momentous occasion. Yet in the history of our nation, it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place as it has for almost two centuries. Few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Brian: Ronald Reagan in 1981 celebrating the peaceful transfer of power, something that everybody took for granted back then. Obama, no slouch in the speechmaking department himself from his first inaugural 30 seconds.

Obama: What is demanded then is a return to these troops. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility. A recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world. Duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly. Firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

Brian: Obama in 2009 and remember what a crisis it was at that moment too as the financial crisis was plunging the country into such uncertainty and how people were feeling about Bush and Cheney in the Iraq War. How different when Donald Trump came along and said this in his inaugural address?

Donald Trump: For too many of our citizens a different reality exists. Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation. An education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge. The crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

Brian: What became known as the American carnage inaugural address famously President George W. Bush sitting in the audience whispered to Hillary Clinton. That was some weird SH. A word I can't say on the radio. You know what I forgot about that speech and even that section of that speech, Professor Mercieca? That he took a shot at the education system as flush with cash. I noticed that now as it went by. You wrote this book, Demagogue for President, The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. Where does that inaugural address fit in?

Mercieca: To be honest, it's about the 2016 campaign. I stopped before the inaugural address.

Brian: How is it consistent with your analysis let's say?

Mercieca: Absolutely. The book is about how Donald Trump took advantage of pre-existing distrust and polarization and frustration and used rhetorical strategies that were designed to connect him to his base consolidating power while separating him and his good people from everyone else in the nation. It’s very evident in his speech. Just to go back to those other clips, what Reagan said in that part of his speech in '81, I think is really a poignant thing to be thinking about today. I wonder if Biden will talk about the peaceful transfer of power. Obviously, it hasn't been peaceful this time but power is transferring. I think that that's something that we all are noting today as we're moving on from the Trump presidency. I hope he does acknowledge it.

[pause 00:18:30]

Brian: I was having a little microphone problem there. I think I'm back now. Forgive me, a little technical difficulty here on my end. Michelle in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. What do you want to hear in Biden’s inaugural address?

Michelle: Hi. I would actually like to hear him address economic inequality. In regards to the last question you asked, I would actually like to really see him make antitrust a priority in his administration, but I'm not sure how he'll put that into his inaugural address.

Brian: Antitrust. You want him to break up the big tech companies.

Michelle: Yes. I think it would set a really good precedent to enact reforms to competition laws enforce big changes to the largest corporations in our country.

Brian: Thank you very much, Michelle. We just have a few seconds left, Professor Mercieca. Joe Biden is not known as a great orator. The speech we are told is going to be relatively short, 20 minutes-ish. How does somebody who's not known as a great speechmaker get over that?

Mercieca: He practices a lot. I know that he has been working on the speech himself and working of course with his speechwriters. He'll be practicing so that he can make the most of the moment just like you do [laughs].

Brian: Yes, I guess you practice, you make the most of the moment. He is sometimes better reading from the teleprompter than he is off the cuff. Though sometimes not. When that passion comes through like yesterday as you pointed out when he led the nation in a moment of mourning, something that President Trump had never done in the pandemic era, that was not all scripted. I think people love Joe Biden at moments like that.

Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. Not everyone is as good at reading off of a teleprompter. Trump never was. He sounded terrible. He was much better when he was extemporaneous. I think we can expect a good speech today. Like I said, I think it'll be hopeful. I think it'll be pragmatic. I think he will sound like a president. He will fulfill the mandates of the genre of the inaugural address. It's a special moment. There's one person on the planet who can give this speech today and become president and that's Joe Biden.

Brian: Jennifer Mercieca, Professor of rhetoric and communication at Texas A&M, author of Demagogue for President, The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump. Thank you so much. You were wonderful.

Jennifer: It's been my pleasure. Thank you.

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