The speech Biden didn’t give at Morehouse: A Marshall Plan for our inner cities

At the very least, President Joe Biden’s commencement speech at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta was pandering. At worst, it was insulting, condescending and massively divisive.

Some believe that, at the very least, President Joe Biden’s commencement speech at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta was pandering. At worst, some believe it was insulting, condescending and massively divisive.

As someone who once worked at the White House, I recall such speeches being “staffed.” Meaning after the speechwriter is finished, it goes up the chain of command — director of communications; deputy chief of staff; chief of staff; and sometimes the vice president — before finally hitting the president’s desk for review and edits. If one watches the Morehouse speech, it’s hard to believe that anyone in authority even saw it before Biden read it off the teleprompter. 

Instead of pandering for the votes that some believe Biden is hemorrhaging in the black community, Biden should have declared: “We Need a Marshall Plan for the millions betrayed and abandoned in our inner cities by both political parties.”

President Biden is fond of mentioning former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy — the father of independent candidate for president RFK Jr. — as he did in this speech. As such, I would like to remind President Biden that Bobby Kennedy was not only known for championing the cause of civil rights, but also for his tireless efforts to lift and protect all who were disenfranchised, ignored or abandoned in our nation.

As he once said: “As long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress.” I would suggest that Biden focus on that message.

If he did, then two immediate questions should come to mind: What if our government — either overtly or via omission — is perpetuating evil and distress? And to whom do the least among us turn when their own government has betrayed them?

Instead of offering divisive language and factual errors, Biden could have declared that millions of men, women and children within our inner cities have been disenfranchised, ignored, abandoned, forgotten — and betrayed. For reasons of self-interest, partisanship and the refusal to admit wrong as to not give the other side a talking point, both political parties have consigned millions of our fellow citizens to hell on earth. Biden knows that and should have said it.

To force politicians, the media and academia to acknowledge that which they purposefully ignore, Biden should have highlighted a 2021 article in the Chicago Tribune which reported that over the course of the last six decades, over 40,000 men, women and children were murdered in that city, with over 100,000 wounded. Biden then could have stressed that “if we extrapolate that number across our major inner cities over that same time-period, the number killed would likely exceed all U.S. casualties during World War II.” 

Biden could then have pointed out: “That is not a statistic. It’s an obscenity.”

While at Morehouse, Biden spoke to his affinity for black America. Great. As many of our most troubled inner cities are majority black, who is speaking out in the defense of the millions of innocent people within those areas? Biden could have asked: “Why have some within my party made certain tragedies and corruption within our inner cities off limits to discuss? Isn’t the Democratic Party first and foremost supposed to be the protectors of the poor, the disenfranchised and the forgotten?”

As president of us all, Biden has an obligation to ask such questions. Why are so many of our alleged “leaders” deliberately turning their backs on such unprecedented urban decay, crime and hopelessness? 

Biden next could have quoted from another Chicago newspaper, the Chicago Sun Times, which headlined a devastating and heartbreaking reality: “Violence in some Chicago neighborhoods puts young men at greater risk than U.S. troops faced in Iraq, Afghanistan war zones.”  

Biden could have then stressed: “Pause for a moment to let that outrage sink in.”

The president could have then outlined a parallel tragedy: beyond the danger those young men face, young school children must cross those “war zones” twice a day to and from school. Children crossing “battlefields” more dangerous than war zones … in the United States. 

Tragically, this same nightmare is playing out in parts of Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans and elsewhere. Biden could have asked: “When do we stop protecting politicians, teachers’ unions and special interests and start protecting these children?”

But he didn’t. He pandered, divided and insulted. 

Biden could have said: “I am calling on every Democratic and Republican leader, the media, CEOs and academia to stop what they are doing and mentally put themselves in the shoes of mothers and fathers who cry themselves to sleep at night worried about the safety of their children; about a broken educational system; about no chance for a better job or home ownership; about no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer; about rent gouging for a dilapidated, vermin-infested apartment; about escalating violent crime; about open-air drug markets; or about there not being a grocery store chain within miles of their home.”

But he didn’t.

Finally, Biden could have made real news by proposing a real solution by saying: “As we send hundreds of billions of dollars of our tax money around the world, I am calling for a Marshall Plan for our inner cities. I am calling on our leaders to pause their lives of privilege for just one second, turn their heads toward the closest inner city and say: ‘We see you.’” 

And indeed, they should. We all should. These are not disposable political pawns. They are Americans being battered by the worst life has to offer. Human beings in misery who have been forgotten, abandoned and unseen for decades.

It’s time to see that. It’s time to see them. It’s time to save them. 

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.