National Post (National Edition)
An inaugural unlike any other
Squinting into the sun with a hand on his family's 120-year-old Bible, Joe Biden said the words he dreamed of uttering for at least half his life. “I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.”
Biden, 78, had spent 36 years as a senator, eight years as vice president and tried three different times to reach the top job.
Here, standing before the Capitol shortly before noon with relatives nearby and the world watching, he finally achieved his goal. Yet as he looked away from John Roberts, the Supreme Court's chief justice administering the oath of office, and across the grand sweep of Washington D.C.'s National Mall, the scene was not the one he had pictured for so long.
Before him was the great and good of American politics not bunched together but sat on seats spread six feet apart, a reminder of the deadly pandemic that he is now in charge of tackling in the U.S.
A little farther down Capitol Hill were scores of National Guard members, a sign of the threat of violence hanging over the event.
Beyond a newly installed 7 foot fence —itself embodying the division of the country he now leads, erected after a mob of Donald Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol — was a stretch of empty land. In a normal inauguration hundreds of thousands of Americans would be there to see the moment power was peacefully transferred, the act on which U.S. democracy relies.
But the Mall was closed to visitors. The Secret Service considered a crowd too dangerous given fears of a repeat of the bloodshed seen earlier this month in the city. Instead, there was a sea of tiny American flags.
Biden, a man of deep Catholic convictions — in part due to his Irish roots — had started the day at church.
He had spent his final night as a private citizen in Blair House, a building just across the street from the White House. It would be the closest he and Trump would come to meeting in Washington.
Trump, still disputing his election defeat if no longer attempting to cling to power, had already announced he would skip the inauguration ceremony, becoming the first president in 152 years to do so.
Instead he got up early and held his own farewell event at a military base.
“This is a great, great country. It is my greatest honour and privilege to have been your president,” Trump said as his audience of a few hundred chanted, “Thank you, Trump!”
“I will always fight for you,” Trump said. “I will be watching. I will be listening. And I will tell you that the future of this country has never been better. I wish the new administration great luck and great success. I think they'll have great success. They have the foundation to do something really spectacular.”
As Trump concluded his remarks, he vowed, “We will be back in some form,” and he told his supporters, “Have a good life.”
Trump and first lady Melania boarded Air Force One shortly before 9 a.m. for their final flight on the presidential aircraft, arriving at Palm Beach International Airport in South Florida just before 11 a.m. They will take up residence in Palm Beach at Trump's private Mar-aLago Club.
Frank Sinatra's My Way played as Air Force One took off with Trump on board one last time.
Trump released a farewell video on Tuesday in which he noted the arrival of a new administration and wished it luck, but did not mention Biden by name.
Instead, Trump touted his record as president and declared that “the movement we started is only just beginning.”
“We did what we came here to do — and so much more,” he said.
Trump did leave a note to his successor, Biden revealed.
“The president wrote a very generous letter,” the new president told reporters at the White House Wednesday afternoon. “Because it was private, I won't talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous.”
Wednesday morning Biden headed to mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle moments after Trump had spoken to his supporters gathered at Joint Base Andrews, with cable news channels carrying the split screen live.
Invited were not just Democratic congressional leaders but Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader who facilitated Trump legislative wins and rarely spoke out against him. It was an early sign of the unity message that dominated Biden's inauguration.
From there Biden was driven in a motorcade more than a dozen cars deep, as law enforcement officers lined the street. Arriving at the Capitol, he walked hand-in-hand up the steps with his second wife Jill, whom he credits with rebuilding his life after that fatal car crash in 1972.
As the Bidens and Kamala Harris, the incoming vice president and her husband Doug Emhoff, made their way through the Capitol, former presidents were seated.
They had been introduced one by one. “The honourable William J. Clinton”; “The honourable George W. Bush”; “The honourable Barack H. Obama.” Only Jimmy Carter, aged 96 and in frail health, was missing from the club — not including, once the clock struck noon, Trump.
His deputy was there, however. Mike Pence, the vice president, snubbed Trump's farewell speech to attend the inauguration. Later he chatted with his successor, Harris.
For Bernie Sanders, Biden's rival for the Democrat nomination, it was a case of what might have been. The Vermont senator sat alone wearing an anorak and a pair of oversized brown and white mittens — a gift from a Vermont teacher, and made partly from recycled plastic bottles.
Two weeks earlier the stage where the audience sat, on the Capitol's western side, had been mounted by seething Trump supporters trying to stop Biden's win being confirmed.
In a nod to that day of anger, Eugene Goodman, the black police officer widely praised for his attempts to hold back the rioters, was picked to escort Harris to the ceremony.
The speeches preceding Biden's were heavy with symbolism, talking about the fragility of America's democratic experiment but also optimism for what could come next.
“We pledge today never to take our democracy for granted,” said Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic senator from Minnesota.
There was religion. Biden, with a face mask on and hands gloved from the cold, bowed his head as Rev. Leo Jeremiah O'Donovan III started his prayer.
“Gracious and merciful God, at this sacred time we come before you in need, indeed on our knees,” O'Donovan said. “But we come still more with hope and with our eyes raised anew to the vision of a more perfect union in our land.”
There was also glamour. Lady Gaga, wearing a vast pink dress and a black top with a brooch of a golden dove carrying an olive branch, sang the national anthem. Jennifer Lopez, all in white with sparkling jewelled earrings, gave a medley of This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful.
Harris's oath of office, which had preceded Biden's, was historic in itself. The pair fist-bumped after she formally became the first woman, African-American and Asian-American to be vice president.
And then it was Biden's turn. When he lowered his right hand after uttering the crucial words, he smiled, turned left to his wife, accepted a kiss on the cheek and a hug.
Moments later he addressed the nation for the first time as the 46th president. “This is America's day,” he said, looking out at the Mall's sea of flags. “This is democracy's day.”
WE PLEDGE TODAY NEVER TO TAKE OUR DEMOCRACY FOR GRANTED.