Undeterred, Biden will push unity in a capital locked down after an insurrection by Michael Scherer | January 17, 2021
Undeterred, Biden will push unity in a capital locked down after an insurrection
Joe Biden will assume the presidency at the peak of a deadly pandemic in a city on lockdown, its streets cleared and many subway stations closed, with about 20,000 National Guard troops patrolling against domestic terrorism and in front of a U.S. Capitol still under repair after a violent insurrection.
a group of people standing in front of a building: The stage is set as they prepare for the Inauguration of President elect Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamala Harris on Saturday afternoon.
© Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post The stage is set as they prepare for the Inauguration of President elect Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamala Harris on Saturday afternoon.
But rather than pivot his plans after the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol, advisers say he has scripted inaugural events built around the same unifying themes of post-partisanship and governmental competence that undergirded his campaign. Biden’s answer to the roughly 1 in 3 Americans who doubt his legitimacy and a departing president who refuses to formally hand off power will be a program of nationally televised inaugural broadcasts anchored around the country’s potential to unite in the face of crisis.
Aides say little was changed in the programming after the U. S. Capitol riot, with most curbs — like the absence of guests on the Mall — dictated by the pandemic. The decision to focus beyond the circumstance is aimed broadly at what Democrats widely see as a moment of political opportunity, as the Republican Party struggles with an internal crisis of identity brought about by President Trump’s rejection of the 2020 election results and his repeated incitement of his supporters.
Biden’s target audience is not the minority of the country that has rejected his election but the much larger group of Americans, including Trump voters, who are open to changing the channel on the dystopian present.
“The inaugural gives us a fresh start, an ability to begin closing a very dark chapter in our history and start a new journey,” said Stephanie Cutter, a co-executive producer of the inauguration. “Given recent events, there is more willingness on the other side of the aisle to reset and protect our democratic norms than there has been for more than four years.”
The nation that greets Biden will not be as divided as the country President Abraham Lincoln faced in 1861, shortly before the Civil War, and the economic hardship is less pronounced than it was for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933, amid the Great Depression, or even President Barack Obama in 2009. But the combined cavalcade of problems facing Biden — a crisis of electoral legitimacy combined with health, economic and race relations emergencies — ranks with the most strained inaugural moments in American history.
“If you have a substantial number of people who don’t believe Biden was legitimately elected, that is an awful side of the age we are living in,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said. “We are in an age when if you have someone like President Trump who wants to generate a fog of lies, it is much more possible to do so.”
Joe Biden wearing a suit and tie: President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris introduce members of their White House science team at the Queen event site in Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 16.
© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris introduce members of their White House science team at the Queen event site in Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 16.
That is not the only reason the inaugural events are likely to play a bigger role in Biden’s presidency than they did for Trump, who could harness attention at will, frequently dominating national attention with a tweet. The ongoing pandemic had already limited the incoming president’s plans for travel during the opening months of the administration, and he is likely to muster as big a televised audience only a few more times in his presidency.
“The goal of any inaugural address is to set expectations for what is to come and make an explicit appeal to the parts of the country that did not vote for you,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House. “There is a part of the country who either did not vote or did not vote for Joe Biden that he can speak to.”
That sentiment is, for the moment, shared broadly by strategists elsewhere in the party, who are betting that the Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol ultimately will make Biden’s task easier because of the division it has opened in the Republican Party.
Though there is no certainty that Biden’s first legislative proposals will attract any Republican support, his team is focused on creating space for that cooperation, as GOP leaders in more- moderate parts of the country face the difficult task of compiling an electoral majority in a party where 1 in 3 Republicans want to steer away from Trump, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
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