A tale of two presidencies: Trump and Biden on the National Mall

ABSTRACT

The 2020 U.S. presidential campaign was about much more than an electoral contest between Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden. Instead, this election cycle revealed two opposing views of the U.S. presidency and a bitter debate over whether it should be understood as an institution defined by and subservient to the U.S. Constitution or as a position dictated by the whims of one individual. In this essay, I examine two corresponding yet contrasting episodes in January 2021 to demonstrate the tensions between viewing the U.S. presidency as an institution versus an individual. Ultimately, I suggest that attending to the institutional nature of the U.S. presidency reveals how the norms of a presidential rhetorical culture are built, perpetuated, and at times dismantled by individual chief executives over time and in place.

KEYWORDS:

• Donald J. Trump
• Joseph R. Biden
• “Save America” rally
• January 6 insurrection
• inaugural address

Notes

1 Donald J. Trump, “Remarks to Supporters Prior to the Storming of the United States Capitol,” January 6, 2021, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/347341. All subsequent references to this speech are taken from this source.

2 Four members of the insurrection mob also died on January 6. These included Ashli Babbitt, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, and Benjamin Philips. Jack Healy, “These are the 5 People Who Died in the Capitol Riot,” New York Times, January 11, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html.

3 Joseph R. Biden, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 2021, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/347806. All subsequent references to this speech are taken from this source.

4 U.S. Constitution, art. II, sec. 1.

5 Here, I deliberately gesture to Thomas B. Ferrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993).

6 Space does not permit me to reflect on the number of ways Trump defied institutional norms throughout his time in office. Two indispensable accounts include Mary Stuckey, “‘The Power of the Presidency to Hurt’: The Indecorous Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump and the Rhetorical Norms of Democracy,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2020): 366-91, https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12641; James P. Pfiffner, "Donald Trump and the Norms of the Presidency," Presidential Studies Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2021): 96-124, https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12698.

7 U.S. Constitution, art II, sec. 2 and 3.

8 Vanessa B. Beasley, You, The People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 22.

9 David Zarefsky, "Presidential Rhetoric and the Power of Definition," Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2004): 607-19, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00214.x.

10 Trump, “Remarks to Supporters.”

11 Dominick Mastrangelo, “200K Flags Placed on the National Mall ahead of Biden Inauguration Represent Missing Crowd,” The Hill, January 19, 2021, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/534738-200k-flags-placed-on-the-national-mall-representing-americans-who.

12 Joseph R. Biden, “Remarks at the Memorial to Victims of COVID-19,” January 19, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/19/inauguration-biden-trump-live-updates/.

13 Allison M. Prasch, "Toward a Rhetorical Theory of Deixis," Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 2 (2016): 166-93, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2016.1156145.

14 Biden, “Inaugural Address.”

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.