Biden faces full plate of calamities
Swearing-in, inaugural speech still set for Capitol steps following riot
The terrifying attack on the Capitol has done little to upend the preparations President-elect Joe Biden is making for the beginning of his administration in seven days, for the worst of reasons: It is only one of several calamities that will confront the new president and his administration.
His advisers have recommitted to holding his swearing-in and inaugural speech on the steps of the Capitol, in the same place where a President Donald Trump-propelled mob pressed through a line of Capitol Police officers to storm the building. Biden said Monday that he was “not afraid” of taking the oath outside.
The administration-to-be’s priorities as it prepares to confront twin coronavirus and economic dilemmas as well as the nation’s obvious political divisions also have not changed, advisers said. This week, Biden will more fully unveil a COVID19 relief package in the trillions of dollars aimed at speeding vaccinations, helping the unemployed and reopening schools.
He has shrugged off questions about whether Trump should be impeached, deferring to members of Congress but saying they and he need to hit the ground running when he is sworn in Jan. 20. On Monday, entertaining the subject more seriously, Biden raised the prospect of a bifurcated system in which Congress would take up impeachment and other pressing matters on parallel tracks. When it comes to the most visible symbol of the change in administrations, Biden’s team and other observers have argued that the image of him taking the oath of office in a traditional setting, with Vice President Mike Pence in attendance, carries even more significance because of the insurrection.
“His inaugural will be important for U.S. history, in the reaffirmation of our democratic rituals,” said Doug Brinkley, an author, historian and professor at Rice University. “The whole world is looking at the Congress being ransacked. But if we can pull out a peaceful inaugural and Mike Pence is onstage, it will send a message to the world that we have not been derailed.”
Aides and allies described a Biden team that is redoubling efforts to prepare for what they already expected would be a mammoth multifront challenge. But they see it less as taking over at democracy’s darkest moment than crafting a brighter dawn. To them, last week’s events crystallized all the warnings Biden had made during the campaign about the dangers of Trump. It illustrated in starker ways than he ever could have the need to unify the country, even if it simultaneously made that task all the more difficult.