In those remarks, Biden charged that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans” - his preferred term for the former president’s political movement - “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”įormer President Donald Trump at a rally in Miami on Nov. Meacham crafted the president’s speech on democracy, delivered from Philadelphia in early September, with the congressional midterms only weeks away. In that book, he wished for a president with “a temperamental disposition to speak to the country’s hopes rather than to its fears.”īiden clearly envisions himself in similar terms. That was also the central theme of Meacham’s bestselling “The Soul of America,” published in the midst of the Trump presidency. It was Meacham who penned Biden’s inaugural address, in which the new president - standing on the same ground where, two weeks before, violent pro-Trump rioters had stormed the Capitol - pledged to “restore the soul and to secure the future of America.”

That is unlikely to be an accident: On the 30th anniversary of Reagan’s 1989 departure from the White House, Meacham praised him in the New York Times for persistent faith in “the possibilities of a country that was forever reinventing itself,” contrasting his optimism with Trump’s dark nostalgia. To those who know him, the 53-year-old historian’s orotund voice can almost be discerned in Biden’s frequent invocations of a unique national destiny, a trope more indebted to conservative hero Ronald Reagan than to contemporary Democrats. This is a moment of crisis in our country’s history,” a campaign spokesman told the New York Times.īiden in November, holding Jon Meacham’s book on Abraham Lincoln, “And There Was Light.” (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) We felt it was important to have a historian like Jon Meacham to put all of this perspective. “The historic seriousness of what the country is facing is a huge piece of what we have talked about in the campaign. At the behest of the Biden campaign, he spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. He is also something of a politician, with influence most academics and journalists can only dream of.

Meacham was recently at the presidential retreat at Camp David, where he was one of several top advisers who helped craft the president’s State of the Union speech, which is expected to celebrate the nation’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic while serving as the preamble to Biden’s expected announcement that he will seek reelection.Ī son of the South who still lives in his native Tennessee - Meacham teaches at Vanderbilt, in Nashville - he is the author of a celebrated Andrew Jackson biography published just days after the Obama-Biden ticket triumphed in the 2008 presidential election. President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

Jon meacham and then there was light