Traditionally, farewell addresses in the Oval Office by US Presidents are relatively forgettable affairs, with arguably one major exception: Dwight David Eisenhower, on leaving office in January 1961, took the opportunity to create a phrase which – perhaps ironically given his own background and deep conservatism – has become a watchword for left and right leaning isolationists, and pacifists, and some conspiracy theorists, ever since:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
I’ve quoted the full section of the speech above because almost all of it bar the line in bold has now been forgotten, particularly the fact that Eisenhower wanted the US’s “arms to be mighty” and how the US could “no longer risk the emergency improvisation of national defence” and how the country had been “compelled” to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. We have forgotten, in other words, that Eisenhower was – in the manner of John Kerry – for the military-industrial complex before he was against it.
I mention this not to snub those readers – and you are out there – who regard said military-industrial complex as the greatest threat to world peace, but to note a parallel with Joe Biden, who, in his farewell address, was very consciously trying to “do an Eisenhower”:
That’s why my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And this is a dangerous — and that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America.
Out, old, and busted: The military industrial complex. In, new, and urgent: The oligarchy of extreme wealth.
There is of course a parallel between Eisenhower and Biden here, in the first instance. Eisenhower left office warning of the very military industrial complex that he had fed and nurtured and created, both during his career as his country’s most senior military man, and eight years of a (very effective) Presidency which saw his country invest enormously in an arms race with the Soviet Union.
Biden leaves office after a political career which started at a national level with election to the US Senate in 1972 at the age of 30, and which has spanned an almost uninterrupted 52 years. In that time, his only time out of political office was the period from January 2017 to January 2021, and for two of those years he was campaigning for the Presidency he is now leaving. For most of his career, he was a senior figure in the US Senate Majority. In other words, there are few people alive who bear more responsibility for the current state of the United States and its equality and wealth levels than the very man giving the speech.
A cynic might note something else: That the United States has always been the land of the super-wealthy, from the days of J.D. Rockefeller to the days of Elon Musk. That cynic might further note that the super-wealthy in American politics – from the Hollywood megastar to the titan of business – have generally and traditionally been friends to American liberalism. Joe Biden has spent his entire career kow-towing for donations and political favour from the richest 1% of the American people. His political death-bed conversion to the idea that this is some kind of problem coincides almost perfectly with the rise of something new: The super-billionaire who is aligning with the cultural and political right. Specifically of course the person that Biden’s aides widely briefed him to have been talking about, Mr. Musk.
Here the comparisons with Eisenhower must end, because Eisenhower to his credit was not a man prone to over-statement or exaggeration. Note well his paragraph about the military-industrial complex: It is actually quite guarded and under-stated. We need a military, but a republic must be careful to guard against making a military too powerful. That’s essentially what he said.
Biden, by contrast, has never done under-statement in his life: Elon and the gang, we are told, are a “literal” “threat to democracy”. This is a statement that has grave implications, since children in school are – rightly – taught that democracy is a foundational value of the western system of Government. If certain people are a “literal threat” to it, then might we be surprised when some indoctrinated youth decides to revive that old American tradition of assassination? At the very end, Mr “words matter” and “tone matters” became Mr “these guys are a literal threat to your democracy”.
This was vintage Biden – Biden at his most pathetic and inflammatory. It was the same Joe Biden who disgracefully in 2012 told an audience of black people that Mitt Romney – yes, Mitt Romney – was going to “put them back in chains”.
It was in many ways a fitting end to a career. Half a century Mr. Biden has represented his generation in American politics, never quite accomplishing anything, and leaving his country dramatically worse than how he found it.
The comparison with Eisenhower has a fitting footnote here. The 34th President left office in 1961, with his country in the ascendency, with growing wealth and growing power and a growing confidence. The 46th President began his career a decade after that, winning his first election (for local office) in 1970. Over a half century, as Biden has aged and fumbled and warned constantly about the villainy of others, his country has declined into debt, division, and weakening global power.
Whatever one thinks about his successor, the promise to “Make America Great Again” is not just a riposte to Biden’s presidency, but to his whole long failed career. Which will, on Monday, at last come to an end. Good riddance.