Analysis: Biden faces huge tasks.
Joe Biden takes office with a call for unity
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president Wednesday, standing on the steps of the Capitol that a mob had stormed two weeks earlier trying to overturn his election.
That’s remarkable, but this may be more so: The failed insurrection isn’t the biggest challenge President Biden now assumes as commander in chief.
At age 78, after a lifetime in politics and three presidential bids, Biden moves into the White House during a deadly pandemic, one that forced the inaugural balls to be canceled and made the swearing-in ceremony a masked and socially distant affair. Amid the economic repercussions of COVID-19, millions have been thrown out of work, many of them now at risk of eviction or hunger.
And he follows the most disruptive president in American history, one who has left a political divide so bitter that it draws comparisons to the Civil War 160 years ago. One so willing to smash political norms that he became the first outgoing president since that war to boycott his successor’s swearing-in.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden said in an emotional and deeply personal inaugural address. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
Biden’s exhortation was less a reach for the stars above than an effort to help the nation regain its footing on the ground.
His speech used mostly plain-spoken language, not sweeping rhetoric. Twice, he referred to his audience as “folks,” his favored colloquialism.
Biden noted the issues that will be his priority: the coronavirus, climate change, racial justice. But he didn’t offer a laundry list of legislation.
The message in his inaugural address was more about values than policy.
“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days,” Biden said, acknowledging the skepticism of many about whether common ground can still be found. Even so, he called it the only way forward.
“We can see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors,” he said. “We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos.”
Inaugurations are often moments of sharp breaks from one administration to another.
But no modern inauguration featured a contrast sharper than the one between the world view, and the approach to governing, of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Trump had declared in his inaugural address four years ago, a preview of the defiant rhetoric that would be his signature. He described a nation beset by poverty, rusted-out factories, violent gangs and illicit drugs. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Biden’s image of America was of a nation that has problems but also promise, even when he referred to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“A riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, to drive us from this sacred ground,” he said. “It did not happen. It will never happen. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Not ever.”
He appealed to the Americans who didn’t support his election.
But he never mentioned Trump by name.
The feeling was apparently mutual. Trump hadn’t mentioned Biden’s name, either, as he spoke to a small crowd at Joint Base Andrews before he left town a few hours earlier, heading to his Florida retreat in his final ride aboard Air Force One. Trump wished the next administration luck and said he had left it a “foundation” that would foster its success.
When he finished, the TV networks showed a split screen: Trump and his family boarding the plane were on one side, a loudspeaker blaring Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” On the other side, Biden and his family were leaving Blair House to attend church at St. Matthews Cathedral before going to the Capitol for the inauguration.
Afterward, the screen was no longer split. It is Biden’s presidency now.