There are good reasons why we are hearing a lot about American democracy as the Biden Administration takes office. If anyone needed reminding of the strain that four years of Donald Trump’s presidency had placed on the institutions underpinning America’s democracy, the 6 January siege of the US Capitol building illuminated the problem with terrifying starkness.
Two weeks later, in the poem that stole the inauguration show, Amanda Gorman insisted that “while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.” In his inaugural address Biden sought to rededicate the United States to its constitutional principles: “Today”, he intoned, “we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.”