Joe Biden’s farewell speech: “An oligarchy takes shape”

George washington’s farewell address, a long eulogy written mainly by alexander hamilton, and published in Claypoole’s Daily Advertiserin September 1796, was an eloquent justification for his departure from public life and for the need for peaceful transitions of power. Washington’s centrality as leader of the revolution and as the first president made him seem irreplaceable, royal. In the spirit of a “parting friend”, he warned against such respect for a leader and the factional and institutional threats that could undermine a nascent democracy.

In modern times, most presidents use the occasion of a farewell for rote self-justification, a summary of achievements, grateful gestures. In other words, it is almost uniformly boring. The exceptions—from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning against a growing “military-industrial complex” in 1961 to Richard Nixon’s rhetoric of self-pity in the face of his resignation and disgrace in 1974—are rare.

On Wednesday night, Joe Biden gave his final speech from the Oval Office. Much of the speech was jaded in its rhetoric and tired in its delivery. Biden is leaving office not just with understandable exhaustion, but with the pain of barely concealed bitterness. He still believes that if it weren’t for the betrayals in his own party, he could have won re-election, but no one could watch his last appearance at the Resolute desk and believe that he could continue in the job, no matter how much one fears it terrible alternative. In a low, papery voice, Biden moved from one topic to the next — from the dangers and prospects of artificial intelligence to the continued freedom of Ukraine — giving each topic a flat sentence or two. As Los Angeles burns, climate change warranted little more than a few lines.

And yet one passage in Biden’s remarks stood out and should resonate with the same lasting resonance as Eisenhower’s prescient admonition more than half a century ago. What Biden intended to describe was quite real, even self-evident by now, but hearing it from a president was startling.

“I want to warn the country about some things that are of great concern to me. And this is a dangerous concern. And it is the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” Biden said. “Today is an oligarchy by taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair chance for everyone to get ahead.”

Seeing Biden reminded me of a moment in December 1990 when the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, stood before the assembled government, Communist Party, military and KGB bigwigs and said, “Dictatorship is coming. I tell you that full responsibility. No one knows what this dictatorship will be like, what kind of dictator will come to power and what order will be established.” A few sentences later, Shevardnadze announced his resignation and let his words hang in the hall.In less than a year, these forces, led by the KGB, put President Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest, sent tanks into Moscow and seized power—until it was recaptured. , three days later. (Dictatorship came eventually, hand in hand with oligarchy, in post-Soviet Russia.)

Biden, when he made his stark warning about the transition of power in the United States, was reserved, nonspecific. He did not directly mention Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or other tech billionaires who have sought the president-elect’s favor. He offered no dissection of the pro-Trump libertarianism that has become the dominant ideology in so much of Silicon Valley. There was no detailed description of how the nascent American oligarchy differs from the more developed, more unchallenged forms of oligarchy in Russia or China. But hearing Biden, who ran for president not as a democratic socialist or social democrat but as a centrist in the party, speak out against the unifying signs of oligarchy is significant. Huge contributions from dark money are already infecting both major parties. Thirteen of Donald Trump’s key administration appointees are billionaires. Two of them, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are entering the administration promising to cut trillions of dollars in “inefficiency.”

This dismal week has also made it clear that Trump has bolstered his administration of fat cats with flashy and alarmingly under-equipped means. Much has been made of Pete Hegseth’s alleged behavior with women and near a bottle. Hegseth’s lame denials (“Anonymous smears!”) in that regard were as expected as they were galling. Even more spectacular was his lack of competence, capacity or knowledge. When Senator Tammy Duckworth asked Hegseth about ongoing international negotiations, he was clueless: she asked him to name which countries are in ASEANthe Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with which the United States does crucial business, and he was forced to plead ignorance. He hadn’t read before class—which is fine for a weekend host on Fox News, but less desirable for a candidate to be the day-to-day manager of the most powerful military in the world at a moment of extraordinary excitement and transformation.

Biden leaves office with a significant political legacy that is severely marred by his inability to limit himself to one term. The costs are clear: another Trump administration that is quickly becoming clear in character and policy. It is to Biden’s credit, however, that in his farewell speech he took pains to warn against what is “taking shape,” a uniquely American form of oligarchy that threatens the democratic spirit that runs through the condemnation of his most distant predecessor.