[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC on Inauguration Day. One way to look at the next few hours is that you get inaugurated in poetry, then you govern in prose. The prose, we are told, will include 17 executive orders on day one to reverse what President Biden sees as some of the worst damage done by Donald Trump that can be undone with the stroke of a pen. From a mask mandate on federal property to reversing Trump's order, to exclude non-citizens from the census count, to ordering federal agencies to examine their policies for systemic discrimination. That's a little bit of the pros and we'll take a closer look.

First, he'll get inaugurated in poetry that will include his inaugural address. Can he inspire the nation both to greater unity and bolder action at the same time, such a central question for him, and there will be actual poetry delivered by an actual poet, 22-year-old Amanda Gorman. She will be following in a tradition that interestingly, runs along party lines. Presidents Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama had poets recite at their inaugurals, no Republicans ever have, and for that matter, no other Democrats. I thought you might like to begin this hour by listening to some of that past Presidential Inaugural poetry and think about those inaugural times compared to today.

In Clinton's and Obama's cases, they also came after what felt to Democrats like cold, hard years of reactionary government. Donald Trump is unique, of course, for all the reasons you know, but let history not forget how hard a turn to the right Ronald Reagan made for eight years, followed by four more years of his vice president George H.W Bush in the White House, whose legacy included the Willie Horton ad, appointing Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to succeed Thurgood Marshall, and a lot of other things.

When Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the ceremony included poet Maya Angelou reading a piece that she wrote that looked both forward in its title, On the Pulse of Morning, and back on the diverse past of the United States that Reagan and Bush never centered. Here's a one minute excerpt.

Maya Angelou:

Each of you, descendant of some passed

On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you,

Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you

Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then

Forced on bloody feet,

Left me to the employment of

Other seekers—desperate for gain,

Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,

Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am that Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree

I am yours—your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

Brian: Maya Angelou and my understanding is she said Angelo, not Angelou, Maya Angelou from her poem, On the Pulse of Morning, at Bill Clinton's first inaugural in 1993. Now, after Clinton easily won re-election in '96, he had poetry at his second inaugural too, and also looking forward and looking back, you could hear it right in the title of the poem, Of History and Hope, by poet Miller Williams.

Miller Williams:

We mean to be the people we meant to be,

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?

With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Brian: Miller Williams from Clinton's second inauguration. By the way, he's the father of Lucinda Williams, in case that's interesting. If today seems to Biden voters like uniquely a moment to recover after Trump, let's not forget how intensely, and it wasn't that long ago, Obama voters were ready to leave the Bush and Cheney era behind, right, and how euphoric many were at the election of the country's first Black president. The poet he chose was Elizabeth Alexander, who some of you may remember was here on the show just a few months ago in her current position as President of the Mellon Foundation. Here as part of her Obama inauguration poem in 2009, called Praise Song for the Day.

Elizabeth Alexander:

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what's on the other side.

Brian: Elizabeth Alexander from Obama's first inauguration. Want to keep going? Here's 30 seconds of Richard Blanco at Obama's second inaugural and Blanco's poem called One Today.

Richard Blanco:

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,

the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:

equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,

the "I have a dream” we keep dreaming,

or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain

the empty desks of twenty children marked absent

today, and forever.

Brian: The 20 children in Newtown reference from Richard Blanco from Obama's second inauguration. To complete the set, we'll set the Wayback Machine for January 20th, 1961, for the first-ever appearance of a poet at a Presidential Inaugural as I understand it, it's amazing that it took that long, isn't it? Were the arts considered that far from the realm of government for all of American history before JFK? President Kennedy tapped the 86 year old poet Robert Frost, 86 at that time. Here is his full 51-second poem, called The Gift Outright.

Robert Frost:

The land was ours before we were the land's

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

Brian: Robert Frost with the first poem ever read at a US Presidential Inaugural, and back 51 seconds seemed like the right amount of time for that. The ones ever since have been longer and I know many people are eagerly awaiting Amanda Gordon's poem today. She says it's going to be about five minutes. If Robert Frost at 86 was the oldest person to have that role, Amanda Gordon will be the youngest at age 22, and she's already a star. Some of you know her. According to what I've read, her poetry got her invited to the Obama White House as a teenager. She became the country's first youth poet Laureate in 2017. She wrote something for the inauguration of the current president of Harvard where she went to college, made Kelly Clarkson cry on Clarkson's TV show, and other things. Let's see how Amanda Gorman meets the moment later on today.

Listeners, I hope you enjoy hearing those past inaugural poetry excerpts, but if the cliche is that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose, we'll see how Joe Biden turns that page after getting inaugurated in poetry a little after 12 noon today. We will preview that as our inauguration continues, inauguration coverage continues right after this.

Announcer 1: Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president on the same stage where rioters overtook the Capitol. Stay with WNYC for complete Inauguration Day coverage beginning at 9:00 AM on The Takeaway. At 11:00, we'll bring you live coverage of the swearing-in ceremony from NPR, followed by a live call-in show with your reactions, hosted by Brian Lehrer and Alison Stewart, Inauguration Day on WNYC, with special coverage continuing through the evening on 93.9 FM and AM 820.

Announcer 2: Support for WNYC comes from Concordia Conservatory, presenting Meant for More, a live stream concert featuring a cabaret with Broadway singer Sierra Boggess, chamber music, and more, this Saturday at 7:00 PM, info@concordiaconservatory.org.

Kibow Biotech. Now in its 23rd year of human microbiome research, Kibow Biotech introduces Biomunity, which helps support immune system health with a combination of pre and probiotics. More at biomunity.com.

WNYC's health coverage is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, bridging science and the arts by supporting books such as Catherine's Zabinski, Amber Waves: The Extraordinary Biography of Wheat, from Wild Grass to World Megacrop. More at sloan.org.

[music]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, inauguration coverage on WNYC. With me now, Fordham University Political Science Professor and politics editor for TheGrio, Christina Greer. Happy Inauguration Day, Christina. Welcome back to WNYC.

Christina Greer: Thank you, Brian. Happy Inauguration Day.

Brian: You're more the prose section guest than the poetry section guest, but anything you want to say after those excerpts or anticipating Amanda Gorman?

Christina: Well, I dabble in poetry every now and again. I think it's interesting that Democrats choose to honor poets and Republicans aren't really into that aspect of the inauguration. I think it's really beautiful the way poets have been able to stitch together an American collective narrative through their poems in the past Democratic inaugurations.

I remember Maya Angelou reciting that poem. I think that was the first time that I was moved, really internally moved by hearing her words, and then obviously, Elizabeth Alexander, so I'm looking forward to today. I think so many of us feel a sigh of relief but also cautiously optimistic. We do know that there are domestic terrorists who have threatened to ruin this day, so I think a lot of people want to get to twelve o'clock and they want to savor the day but also get through the day. It feels like a new administration is on solid footing.

Brian: Here's maybe where the poetry and prose meet a little bit. As reported in USA Today this morning, Amanda Gorman told the AP that she was not given specific instructions on what to write for the inaugural poem, but that she was encouraged to emphasize unity and hope over "denigrating anyone or declaring ding dong, the witch is dead" over the departure of President Donald Trump. She's calling her inaugural poem, The Hill We Climb.

Gorman says she has been given five minutes to read, I believe the Maya Angelou poem also was five minutes. Prior to what she called the Confederate insurrection on January 6th, she had only written about three and a half minutes worth, she told the AP. She said, "That day gave me a second wave of energy to finish the poem," adding that she will not refer directly to January 6th but will touch upon it.

She said the Capitol mob did not upend the poem she had been working on because they didn't surprise her and, "The poem isn't blind. It isn't turning your back to the evidence of discord and division," so some interesting interview clips there from the Associated Press via USA Today of poet Amanda Gorman who we'll hear from later.

It's a fine line to walk perhaps, Christina, for a poet in a political context, and of course, many fine lines for Joe Biden to walk as president. Have you seen the list of 17 executive orders, memorandums, and proclamations? Technically those are different things but the New York Times describes it as a full-scale assault on his predecessor's legacy. Have you seen that list?

Christina: Yes, I have seen the list and I think it should quiet any folks who were on the far left who were saying, oh there's no difference between a Biden and a Trump presidency. The fact that he is going to revoke the Muslim ban, he's going to get us back into the Paris Climate Agreement, He's going to stop the Keystone Pipeline. The eviction moratoriums he's going to extend federal aid, thinking about rescinding the 1776 Commission which was just a bunch of musings, thinking about a national mask mandate, all of these things are of great importance.

I think the leadership that we're going to see starting at say 12:15 today is a direct reversal and a rebuke of the past four years of the collective trauma that so many people have lived under

Brian: Listeners, what do you hope to hear from Joe Biden's inaugural address or see him actually do on day one? 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer. I see he's sending Dr. Fauci to a World Health Organization meeting tomorrow. Of course, Trump tried to leave the World Health Organization. I think that departure process wasn't complete, so Biden's just not going to complete it.

I want to read a section from this New York Times article that details some of the things that Biden plans to do today pertaining to racial justice. It says, "Susan Rice, who will lead the president's Domestic Policy Council said that Mr. Biden would sign a broad executive order aimed at requiring all federal agencies to make equity a central factor in their work. The order will among other things require that they deliver a report within 200 days to address how to remove barriers to opportunities in policies and programs. Mr. Biden will direct federal agencies to conduct reviews looking to eliminate systemic discrimination in their policies and to reverse historic discrimination in SafetyNet and other federal spending, Ms. Rice said, and he will begin to working group examining federal data collection on diversity grounds," and it continues quoting Susan Rice.

"The president-elect promised to root out systemic racism from our institutions and this initiative is the first step in that historic work. Delivering on racial justice will require that the administration takes a comprehensive approach to embed equity in every aspect of our policy-making and decision-making." Then it goes on just a little more, the article. It says, "Another executive order will require that the federal government does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, a policy that reverses action by Mr. Trump's administration. Another will overturn the Trump executive order that limited the ability of federal government agencies to use diversity and inclusion training."

"Mr. Biden will cancel Mr. Trump's-" they always say Mr. in the New York Times and it doesn't matter what anybody's actual title is- "Trump's 1776 Commission which released a report on Monday that historians said distorted the history of slavery in the United States." That's a lot, Christina, or at least it sounds like a lot for one day. How does it sound to you?

Christina: I think it's a beginning step in a right direction. We know that executive orders are not laws and this is pretty par for the course, Brian. All incoming presidents have spent usually the transition period combing through policies and executive orders of their predecessor to see which ones they want to overturn on day one. I think Joe Biden has a pretty arduous task ahead in the sense that he's facing not just a public health crisis, but also a public safety crisis in addition to an economic crisis.

When he and Barack Obama came to office in 2009, I don't think we fully understood just how close to the edge we were in the economic crisis. Joe Biden's been there and I think that that puts him in a great position to work with Kamala Harris to provide some substantive relief to families economically, but also this is a man who's suffered great loss personally, and so I think he understands the 400,000 lost Americans just to COVID alone. There's a certain empathy that's been missing these past four years that Joe Biden's going to bring into his policy perspective. The fact that he reads and appreciates science should not be underestimated. The fact that he understands that there are certain things that he does not know and so he will rely on experts. I think that the executive orders you just listed are just the beginning of his way of thinking about policy and moving the country in a very different direction than what we've seen in the past four years.

Brian: I want to take a call from somebody who's an astute listener to that Robert Frost poem and what wasn't in it. Amy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Amy.

Amy: Hi Brian, and I'm sorry, I didn't remember the guest's name.

Brian: It's Christina Greer. That's okay.

Amy: Greer, thank you. Glad to see this day. I couldn't help noticing that Robert Frost's poem does not make any mention of even the existence of people on this land that he was talking about, before the people he was talking about.

Brian: Right. Amy, thank you for that. Certainly, I don't think that exact poem would be read again at a Democratic president's inaugural, at least starting, "The land was ours before we were the land's." Well, "ours" in his telling refers to the colonialists I believe.

"She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England's, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves," and went on from there. Amy's exactly right. No mention in 1961 at Kennedy's inaugural, of who that land really belonged to previously since he was trying to make that historical reference.

Christina: Yes, indeed. I think as we've evolved as a nation in inclusion of nonwhite groups into not just policy but our discourse, I think it bodes well for President Biden, one of the priorities for him is to cancel the Keystone Pipeline, which is a recognition of Native lands, not just the environmental factors and the environmental effects that would be detrimental to all of us in the long run, but they're sacred Native American land, and I think that there's restitution and an acknowledgment that still has not occurred.

I think with some of the appointments that Biden has already alluded to, it's going to get us a step closer to a real reckoning. We're having a racial reckoning as a nation as slow as it may be, but I think we also have to include the Native understanding of what we have done to several hundreds of tribes of people over time. Each administration seems to get a little bit closer. We obviously had a rollback these past four years in very detrimental ways, but I'm confident with some of the folks that Joe Biden is thinking about surrounding himself in the cabinet positions, in subsequent positions, that we'll start to have that conversation, not just about Native American peoples, but what this land means to them and what it should mean to us as people who have come and conquered in some of the most egregious ways we've ever seen.

Brian: Let's take another call. Peter and Syosset, you're on WNYC. Hi Peter.

Peter: Yes. Good morning, Brian, and to your guest. What I would like to see, and I just don't remember hearing about it, but there's been so much going on, is the reversal and it seems to go back and forth between Democrats and Republicans, of the restriction on foreign aid being used for birth control. Republicans put that in place, Democrats rescinded that, and I don't remember hearing about it. I would like to see that restriction rescinded as soon as possible.

Brian: Peter, thanks. That's a good example to raise because Christina, aa I'm sure you know, that particular one, I wonder how many administrations it goes back, but it keeps getting instituted and rescinded and instituted and rescinded depending on if there's a Democrat or a Republican in the White House. Foreign aid with respect to birth control and other women's health in particular to poor countries.

Of course, the issue is that any money that's used for anything like that could potentially be used for even talking about abortion as an option in the eyes of Republicans, and so they rescind that. That happened when Bush came in after Clinton. That happened when then Obama turned it back and Trump reversed it again. You're aware of that whole history?

Christina: Somewhat Brian. I've done a little bit of research on that. I think it really hearkens to the extent that lobbying entities across this country have grips on particular parties. We know that the NRA and the evangelicals have a very tight grip on many Republican politicians across the nation, and they're able to dictate policy, not just domestically, but foreign policy as well.

The beauty and the curse of American democracy is that we can ebb and flow and we can evolve, and we don't have one calcified way of thinking. When we choose a Democratic president, we get a more left-leaning vision of not just our country but our world. Obviously, the opposite occurs when the country chooses a Republican president. There is something about a woman's right to choose that is a much larger global conversation that we're starting to have in particular nations, but we're still so far away from progress, real substantive progress, where a woman is able to have domain over her own decision-making.

Brian: Yes. People generally call that I think the global gag rule when Republicans are in the office. It is often a first-day executive order in one direction or another, and I think the caller is right about that. I haven't seen it mentioned per se with respect to Biden, though I imagine he'll follow suit with the other Democratic presidents. Spencer in Berkeley Heights. You're on WNYC. Hi Spencer.

Spencer: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian: Of course.

Spencer: I'm hoping that after president Biden hopefully does a full-court press on the pandemic relief package, that he vehemently reminds Congress that its top priority should be restoring the teeth to the Voting Rights Act. There are a lot of other high priority items that need to be addressed, but for Congress to actually be the duly elected representatives, it means having a populace that's able to duly elect. There've been so many instances, especially with this past election where I feel that's been called into question, that there needs to be a far better job of making certain that all those who want to vote are capable of voting regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic status.

Brian: Thank you. Professor Greer, yes, after Congress passed a renewal of the voting rights overwhelmingly, and then the Supreme court in 2013 overturned the heart of it, Congress could have gone back and re-instituted just a tweaked version so it would pass the Supreme Court masthead but they never did it, right?

Christina: Right, and I think that the interesting thing is easier said than done. We've been voting without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act since about 2016 in presidential elections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, it's passed the house. Hopefully, it will pass the Senate now that the Democrats have control, but let's be clear, the Republicans are not going to let this go quietly into the night. They are going to fight this tooth and nail because they recognize that having free and fair elections and without voter suppression, without voter disenfranchisement, their success is severely limited, especially on a national scale.

I think yes, on paper, should everyone have an equal opportunity to go to the polls without harassment, without fear, without roadblocks, absolutely, but we know that in several states across the country, we know that Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, even Virginia. I think a lot of Republicans are going to mobilize to make sure that a Voting Rights Act is not passed because that severely limits their future efforts, and voter suppression is in many states the only way that Republicans can win.

Brian: That of course is a battle to come in many states after the lie about election fraud based on these ways that people voted more during the pandemic than they had previously like through the mail and drop-offs and things like that, whether that's going to become a new arena for Republicans to attempt to limit voting by restricting those things, which have been expanding anyway pre-pandemic. We'll see if that becomes a new battleground.

Listener tweets, "I always assumed that Frost's poem was sarcastic and that the whole point was our complete disregard for Native Americans. I remember hearing it as a child and thinking that at the time." I'll admit that I'm not enough of a Frost scholar to know if that poem was sarcastic and that was all aimed that the whole point was that he didn't mention Native Americans when referring to "our land", and I don't expect you to have the definitive answer to that either, Christina, unless you do.

Christina: No I don't. I enjoy poetry but I'm by no means a scholar. I'll tune in Brian because I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of it.

Brian: Some right. I promise that answer tomorrow, folks, if we can't get it by eleven o'clock when our show ends today and we go to NPR inauguration coverage in Washington. Let's see, some of the other things that are coming in, boy, we are getting a lot of tweets so I'm going to have to scroll down pretty quickly here. "Would like to see reparations and reverse citizens united," somebody writes. "Medicare for all," another person writes. Someone else starting an argument, no that's-- Oh, another one, abolition of the Electoral College and pack the courts.

Another one says, "Abolish the Senate." It's funny about abolish Senate, obviously, that's not going to happen. That would take a constitutional amendment that would be almost impossible. I think we've learned a lot this year and in the last few years about how the Senate so warps representative democracy in a time when rural states are so red and urban states are so blue, but they tend to be the much more populated states like New York and California, and yet the rural states with very very few people get the same two senators and so democracy in percentage terms, proportional representation terms, really warps democracy in this day and age, doesn't it, Christina?

Christina: Oh, yes, and you know I always think about just the visual of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris together. Both of them were senators from their respective states. Joe Biden represented Delaware with a state that's under one million people. Whereas Kamala Harris represents a state that had over 40 million people. Well over 40 million people, and so when we think about some of the antiquated choices that the Framers made, I do think that it is time to revisit several of these conversations.

I have much more complicated feelings about the Electoral College which aren't necessarily on the side of progressive Democrats. I do think when I talk to my students and I give them the final essay and they can re-imagine and try and envision what a different type of governance structure could look like in the nation, assuming that one day they may be senators or members of the House and called on to vote on these decisions.

I think we can have honest conversations about the size of the Supreme Court. About whether or not Washington DC and Puerto Rico should become states and whether or not Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico and Washingtonians should be able to decide that and vote for themselves, to see if that's something that they want. All of these things are up for grabs. I do think though that, to quote my grandmother, Joe Biden has bigger fish to fry right now when it comes to the COVID crisis, when it comes to dissemination of the vaccine, when it comes to getting the economy back on track.

When I think about what his first month or two should look like, those for me are the priorities, and then I would say having Kamala Harris and members of his cabinet think about some of the longer-term visions, understanding that he may only have two years to get certain things done before divided government returns.

Brian: I want to get you on one other news item before you go. I want to play a pretty remarkable statement yesterday by Mitch McConnell. This is from his final speech on the Senate floor as majority leader. He will be in the minority as of later today, and McConnell anticipating I guess the Trump impeachment trial to come in the Senate, in addition to all the policy priorities, McConnell just said flat out that Trump's behavior was a cause of the riot, listen.

McConnell McConnell: The last time the Senate convened, we had reclaimed the Capitol from violent criminals who tried to stop Congress from doing our duty. The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.

Brian: Christina, that was Mitch McConnell. He sounds like someone who's ready to vote for a conviction on the article of impeachment which is for incitement to insurrection. McConnell said the president provoked it, and you know what I did this morning, I looked up provoking at Thesaurus and sure enough, it says provoke is a synonym for incite.

Christina: Yes. Well, listen there's no honor among thieves and I think a lot of Republicans, not all but a lot will begin to jump off of this sinking Titanic that was the Trump administration. I think Joe Biden has a really rough road ahead when it comes to that because there are certain Democrats who think this has to come through the Senate. We have to vote on whether or not Donald Trump should face some long-term punishment. Then there are going to be other Democrats and obviously many Republicans who want to just put those years behind us and focus on the future.

I do think something needs to be said about we cannot have a member of the executive branch, the president of the United States, ever behave the way that Donald Trump behaved in the past four years. Yes, to have Mitch McConnell say that is important, but as we've seen over the past four years, Brian, Republicans, to quote Polonius, "Words, words, words." They've said lots of words but when it came time to vote and do what was right for the American people, they were noticeably quiet.

Brian: Words, words, words, and we will play more words, words, words, when we come back in a minute, some clips from past inaugural addresses, and look forward to what Joe Biden may say today. For now, we thank Christina Greer, Fordham Political Science Professor and Politics Editor of TheGrio. Thanks as always, Christina.

Christina: Thank you, Brian. Happy Inauguration Day.

 

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.