In some circumstances, a president’s official Farewell Address to the Nation may be an occasion for sunny reflection. President Joe Biden’s, delivered five days before he left office, began that way, with a celebration of America’s promise and of its progress under his tenure.
But midway through, Biden’s tone shifted abruptly, as he warned of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”
In striking phrases, Biden charged that an “oligarchy” of “extreme wealth, power and influence” threatened not only Americans’ cherished legacy of equal opportunity, but their “basic rights and freedoms” and even the health of democracy itself. “We see the consequences all across America,” he observed. “And we’ve seen it before.”
