My father and I, discouraged at the election over the holiday, opened a book of poetry I brought along to the house.
Somewhere we traveled was back in time to John F. Kennedy’s inauguration on a bright snowy day on Jan. 20, 1961.
Almost unbelievably, Kennedy asked New England poet Robert Frost to compose and read an original poem for the high-noon hour in front of the country, so ready for a change.
(A heavy storm is coming straight toward us.)
The white-maned wintry Frost praised the young president as heralding “The glory of a next Augustan age ... A golden age of poetry and power/Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.” The glare was such he could not read the page, so he spoke his “The Gift Outright” from memory.
Don’t even think about the fall from grace — the paradise lost — from that shining January to the violence of Jan. 6, 2021. In these dark December days, can a cruel January 2025 be far behind?
(Or just try not to despair.)
My dad, born in the days of the truly great Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, knows a good president when he sees one. Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were all good. Lyndon Johnson tragically lost at war but excelled at home.
The exuberant odes of Walt Whitman, such as “I Hear America Singing,” don’t land well now. He wrote in the face of the oncoming Civil War, when North and South severed for years.
More to our moment, Langston Hughes’ poetry addressed the gap between American dreams and reality. “America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath — America will be! ... Its dream/Lies deep in the heart of me.”
The Harlem Renaissance bard expressed a bittersweet hope that the land of the free would one day be.
Donald Trump, 78, never had a poetic bone in his body. He speaks low American English. As president-elect with less than a majority mandate, he is already breaking every rule in the book, threatening tariffs against allies and neighbors Canada and Mexico even before he takes the oath of office.
Trump also announced key Cabinet appointments too soon, as if to send the ominous message that he’ll be ready for “retribution” on day one.
A hard-right election denier, Kash Patel, an outrageous pick to head the FBI, is set to take marching orders. He declared the bureau headquarters should close.
The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, works at Trump’s elbow, in cahoots with a conspiracy to cut federal agencies and burn them to the ground.
(Musk decimated Twitter, so he has a blueprint.)
Don’t look now, but Trump makes no secret that he aims to strip the Senate of its power to “advise and consent” — to approve — his nominees. The 53-47 Republican Senate will have to rely on a few women and men to save its soul from Trump’s iron fist.
(The Constitution is crying bloody murder. The nation’s newspapers aren’t hearing it.)
The best of the press should be riding like Paul Revere every day to warn of the danger democracy is in. The American people must know what stress our institutions are under at this turning point in time.
“This is not normal,” says one Washington Post writer, laughably.
Some journalists lament the death of “expertise” in Trump’s lineup. That’s true, but what’s worse, his nominees so far have no experience in the fields they are meant to lead.
Pete Hegseth, a Fox host, now alleged to be a raging drunk and a sexual abuser, running the Pentagon? Are you kidding me?
Then we came upon John Keats, the poet whose house still stands in Northwest London:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ... and all ye need to know.”
Trump chose people whose good looks he loves. But there’s precious little truth in his loyal soldiers and courtiers.
The book we read was a collection of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ best-loved poems. We could barely take it in, that a Kennedy family son will join Trump’s side to wage war on public health and crusade against vaccines.
You can’t write irony any better — or worse — than that.
Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2025
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