It was as much a sermon as a political speech, more an exercise in healing than the recitation of an agenda.
When Joe Biden urged America to “stop the shouting, lower the temperature,” the new president was returning to the raison d’etre of his candidacy, that he would defuse the animosity that has gripped Washington for decades and especially the last four years. The most succinct sound bite: “We must end this uncivil war.”
Again and again, the 46th president struck variations on that note, hearkening back to a time when party leaders fought by day and shared a drink by night.
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,
” he said.
And when Biden, quoting Lincoln, said he would put his whole “soul” into the effort, he was–as the nation’s second Catholic president, six decades after JFK–using a term that has deep resonance in all the Masses he has attended.
Biden sent a message to the media as well, calling for a rejection of the culture in which…