Long before the sun had risen over the dome of the US Capitol on the day that Joe Biden was sworn in as president, technicians on the inaugural platform tested the teleprompter he would later read from by scrolling through America’s most celebrated sermon:
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
When I first saw the lines of the Gettysburg Address on those screens in front of the presidential podium, I thought it must be some kind of sick joke. However, the words of Abraham Lincoln could hardly be described as being out of place. Washington, after all, looked that morning like a military encampment.
