Presidential seal... with a kiss
Congratulations from wife Jill as Joe Biden takes office and vows to end America’s ‘uncivil war’
JOSEPH Robinette Biden Jr was sworn in yesterday as the 46th president of the United States, pledging to unite the country and confront an array of convulsing challenges dividing a fractured nation.
“This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge,” Biden said in an inaugural address that called on the nation to end its “uncivil war” and embrace a united front amid a series of issues.
“Unity is the path forward and we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you we will not fail.”
With his hand on his family Bible, Biden recited the oath taken by his predecessors, the pinnacle of a career in public leadership that began a half century ago.
Moments before, Kamala Harris took her oath of office, making her the country’s first female vice president and also the first Black American and first with Indian heritage to hold the second highest office in the land.
She placed her hand on twin Bibles, one from a friend and another belonging to Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice.
Biden replaces outgoing president Donald Trump, whose scandal-plagued single term was constantly dogged by accusations that he failed to uphold his own oath, including in recent weeks as he refused to concede the election, tried to browbeat his vice president Mike Pence to violate the Constitution and inspired a deadly riot by supporters at the US Capitol.
Biden, who at 78 is the oldest man to be sworn in as president, secured the office by pledging to be the polar opposite of Trump — to cool tempers rather than inflame them. He also promised to undo much of Trump’s legacy and restore what he referred to as “the soul of America” by proving that the past four years represented an aberration rather than an enduring rift in the national fabric.
Early yesterday, he announced the first in a blizzard of actions reversing the Trump administration on a wide range of issues.
Four years after Trump gave a dark and defiant inaugural address, pledging to end “American carnage,” Biden takes office seeking to appeal to the country’s more hopeful sentiments and making a plea for unity.
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” he explained, calling on the nation to “start afresh.”
He cited his inauguration as a symbol of the country turning the page after its democracy was tested like never before.
“We’ve learned again that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile — and at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” he said.
While Biden described America as a “place of hope and light, of limitless possibilities,” during an emotional goodbye ceremony in Delaware, the scenes surrounding his inauguration in Washington yesterday offered a visceral reminder of the dark challenges that he now faces as leader of the free world.
The platform where he stood, on the West Front of the US Capitol, was overrun two weeks earlier by a mob incited by Trump that stormed the House and Senate chambers, trying to stop legislators from affirming Biden as the next president.
The decision by Biden and Harris to take their oaths of office outside and at the Capitol was itself an act of defiance in the aftermath of an hours-long riot in which Trump supporters screamed their intention to physically assault elected officials.
The capital remained in a state of partial lockdown, with more than 20,000 members of the US National Guard patrolling the streets to prevent a repeat of the insurrection that breached the US Capitol and left one police officer and four rioters dead.
The National Mall that Biden and Harris faced as they took their oaths was filled not with people but with 200,000 flags — a reflection of the deadly pandemic still raging a year after Trump first claimed it was “totally under control.”
More than 400,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 and the viral pathogen continues to upend life for millions. Key to Biden’s success will be his ability to contain the pandemic and marshal the resources to hasten distribution of a vaccine.
Trump, who recently became the first president in American history to be impeached twice, became the first incumbent to refuse to attend his replacement’s oath-taking since 1869 and has continued to claim falsely that he was the rightful victor in November’s election.
The recent turmoil added to the multiple crises Biden faces. In addition to the pandemic, the country’s economy is buckling, and the incoming president has pledged to address climate change and racial justice — two issues that dominated the past year, with huge climate-propelled fires in California and massive unrest in cities and towns over police violence.
“Coming in, he’s got his hands full, obviously,” said ex senator Chris Dodd, a Biden confidant. “Any one of these issues alone would be a major problem, but combining all of them poses some real challenges.”
Dodd also stressed that Biden’s age and deep experience with national politics and crises over the past half century would guide him.
“There is this expression, ‘It’s not his first rodeo’,” he said.
“There is a wonderful maturity and calm that Joe has demonstrated over these past few months. That’s the voice of experience, of confidence, of discipline — you don’t become an alarmist. The country wants to see in their leader confidence and assurance.”
Biden has been trying to court members of Congress as he prepares to pitch an ambitious legislative agenda that includes economic relief tied to the pandemic, an immigration overhaul, infrastructure spending and climate change policy.
Biden, the second Catholic elected president, after John F Kennedy, invited Republican and Democratic congressional leaders to attend Mass with him yesterday morning ahead of the inauguration. The decision by Senate majority leader Mitch Mcconnell and house minority leader Kevin Mccarthy to attend — and to skip a farewell event for Trump that took place around the same time — offered one sign that Biden’s approach may at least take some of the vitriol out of the policymaking process.
‘Unity is the path forward’