Amid a call for unity, Biden’s journey begins
A little pomp and some difficult circumstances.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have — at last! — taken office and now the work begins. Anew.
Biden’s acceptance speech did not skirt the obvious — the insurrection of Jan. 6, but, he said, “democracy has prevailed.”
It was a generous speech, and may not have soared in the manner of Barack Obama’s, but it was not weird or dark, like his predecessor’s four long years ago.
It was Bidenesque. Relatively short. Often plain spoken, sincere, sometimes a bit faltering, but lacking pretense and resolute.
Biden spoke in a heavily guarded inauguration outside the same building where a mob tried to force Congress to overturn the election. He started by noting the toll of the coronavirus, the cry for racial justice, the challenges of climate change, the threats of domestic terrorism and white supremacy, and a sense of hopelessness in the country – and that all these challenges will require “unity,” which he described as a “great cause.”
He later asked those listening to join him in a silent prayer honoring those 400,000 who have lost their lives in America to the pandemic.
Coming months will continue to be a time of “testing” but an opportunity to start “afresh” and to end the “uncivil war” raging between political ideologies and partisans. We can only hope. Noting that Harris has become the first woman vice president, “don’t tell me things can’t change.”
They can, and did. America he said can once again be a force for good, for “decency and healing” and said his “whole soul” is in this cause.
He also acknowledged that the call for unity can come off as a “foolish fantasy.” Biden said he “gets it” that people are divided — but that the battle now ensues for our “better angels” to prevail and that violent dissent will no longer be tolerated.
Biden said it is now a time to stop the shouting and bitterness and “exhausting outrage” and “chaos.”“I will be a president for all Americans,” he said at an inauguration where Black Americans including the young poet laureate Amanda Gorman were prominent, and pledged to fight as hard “for those who did not support me as those that did.”
He repeated his description of the next months of virus as a “dark winter,” but quoted the Bible that “joy cometh in the morning.”
Finally, he said, the country has been “tested” and come out stronger for it and that the nation will once again be a beacon around the globe.
Biden said, “We will be judged” by how a united America, rises to the occasion. “I believe we will.” Shortly after the speech, Biden tweeted (let it be a rare foray into social media) that he was getting right to work.
And in a final coda to the presidency of Donald Trump, on the way out, Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations, mostly to people who were in, or once in, his inner circle. He didn’t pardon himself or members of his family.
His departure from Washington, D.C. was not quite the send off he probably envisioned. The usual cast of dubious Trumpian characters showed up, as the Village People’s “YMCA” played on a sound system, but the small crowd was more notable for who didn’t attend: Vice President Mike Pence, who earned the wrath of the former president by finally daring to stand up to him over 45’s false claims of a stolen election; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. All three chose a better venue, Biden’s inauguration, which Trump, faithful to the end to his own twisted need to divide, decided not to attend. Pence and his wife, Karen, later shared a post-inauguration moment and laughter with Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. An early sign of a new unity?
If any good came out of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol it was just this: Trump, under the cloud of a second impeachment, stopped trying to overturn the election results, and, even more diminished, left office.
For that too we can be grateful.
President Biden’s speech did not skirt the obvious but he still said ‘democracy has prevailed.’