I listened to the speech everyone waited for. The speech delivered what was wanted in the way of introspection, humility, and gratitude — for the first 30 minutes or so. To call the speech “unifying” is an understatement. It offered an appeal for unity, but it did something far more important: namely, the speech conveyed a commitment to the whole of a people of diverse sentiments and views. In other words, the speech did not offer a unity that papers over differences. Instead, it summoned the resolve to persevere through our differences without persecuting those who differ. That is more than unity; that is recognition of a common good beyond different interests.
It was no ways surprising, therefore, when the remaining hour of the speech resumed direct discussion of the policy differences that animate the effort to attain an electoral mandate. The potential mandate must be understood as confirming the policy agenda — only now it comes with the assurance that the policy agenda will be pursued with respect for dissenting views and civility. In that sense, it was a plea for an end to #resistance.
What can replace resistance in the face of defeat? Only the patient and affirming resolve to yield to majority decisions, properly arrived at, while preserving the privilege of dissent will be compatible with a politics of unity. That will not come easily for a people increasingly liable to a stark good-versus-evil (benign versus malign) conception of politics. The tendency to view the political opponent as an enemy rather than a misguided compatriot is self-reinforcing when one sees the society as fundamentally shaped by relations of oppressors and oppressed. The appeal for unity, therefore, is first and foremost a summons to recognize that the United States is not formed of oppressors and oppressed.
That is the context — and that alone — in which an appeal for civility can gain any purchase. And that is difficult to achieve. Remarkably, though, the speech demonstrated what is required to accomplish so heroic a stance. What must count — but probably has not been noticed — as the most important passage in the entire speech was the casual and understated quotation of the request from Franklin Graham that Mr. Trump avoid swearing in his public pronouncements, followed by Mr. Trump’s head-nodding acknowledgment that he understood the request and his jocular, off-hand remark that it could be hard to do.
In that moment, Mr. Trump said much about himself and his countrymen. He recognized the importance of appealing to our “better angels” at the same time as suspecting that there were, perhaps, looming devils that plague us. The looming devils are habits of discourse all too apparent everywhere we turn and that raise the question of whether we are capable of rising above our habitual and worst instincts. At the same time, in sharing this quandary. Mr. Trump made a tacit appeal that we should all try. Yes, incongruous though it may seem in light of past performance, in this moment, Mr. Trump was indeed pondering — and perhaps even offering — to try very hard to do better.
The reason for trying to do better comes quite simply from the desire to reach for a good common to all of us, on terms that we can all embrace. That means a civil stifling of the instinct to set ourselves apart from one another, and an effort to uplift patriotic regard for one another.
Finally, this noble ambition was reflected in the lovely recounting of the heroic contributions from the nation’s past that can serve still to inspire emulation.
That so much was accomplished in what may at times have seemed a rambling oration ought to inspire us to reflect on how much attention we owe to those who seek to engage our devotion to the country.