Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was installed as the 46th president of the United States, promising to gather a spirit of national unity to guide the country through one of the most dangerous chapters in American history.
Millions of Americans watched from home while court president John Roberts administered the oath of office to Biden on the steps outside the Western Front of the United States Capitol, just two weeks after watching in horror as a crowd of supporters loyal to his predecessor broke into the building in a last violent position to overturn the presidential election results.
Donald Trump, who never formally admitted his defeat, left the White House on Wednesday morning and did not attend, a final show of irreverence for the traditions and norms that have long shaped the presidency. Mike Pence, the outgoing vice president, was there, accompanied by the Clintons, the Bushes and the Obama.
Fear and anxiety surrounded preparations for Biden’s tenure. The threat of further violence resulted in the sending of some 25,000 National Guard soldiers, transforming the glowing city on a hill into a military fortress.
The pandemic had already greatly reshaped the events and the inaugural ceremony, which usually draw hundreds of thousands of spectators to the National Mall. Much of the area was closed. Instead, the flags of states and territories represented those that the inaugural committee had urged to stay away, in fear that large crowds could spread the coronavirus, which has already killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Biden vowed to defend the constitution and the country “against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. At 78, he is the oldest president to take the oath of office.
Part of Biden’s legacy was ensured even before he laid his hand on a large 19th-century Bible, a family heirloom with a Celtic cross and held by his wife, Jill Biden. Biden, the vice president of the country’s first black president, elevated Kamala Harris as America’s first woman, the first black woman and the first Asian American vice president.
The inauguration concludes one of the most volatile transitions of modern memory, an interregnum that tested the fragility of America’s commitment to an orderly and peaceful transition of power. For weeks after his defeat, Trump incited legalists with baseless allegations of a stolen election.
His claims were rejected by dozens of courts, security experts, Republican election officials and his then attorney general. But Trump refused to accept his fate, a decision that culminated two weeks ago in the attack on the United States Capitol, where protesters tried to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Hours after taking the oath, Biden was expected to return to the White House to begin undoing what his chief of staff described as “the most serious damage” to his predecessor’s legacy. With a sense of urgency that aims to reflect the magnitude of the tasks ahead, Biden will sign 15 executive orders, as well as a flood of Oval Office memos and decrees, according to his top political advisers.
He will immediately return to the Paris climate agreements, end the effort to leave the World Health Organization, revoke the travel ban in several predominantly Muslim countries, revoke the authorization for the Keystone XL pipeline and extend a pause in student loan payments and a federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.
It will also send a broad immigration bill to Congress and impose a national mandate requiring the use of a mask on federal buildings and interstate travel.
Together, the Biden government hopes to mark a sharp break with the reality show drama that has conquered the White House over the past four years, demonstrating a commitment to the job of governing.
Almost half a century after being installed as one of the country’s youngest senators, he became the oldest president to take the oath of office.
Washington veteran first elected to the Senate in 1972, where he served until he became vice president of Barack Obama in 2009, Biden arrives at the White House with one of the deepest curricula in American political history, an experience he will trust as heir of a country devastated by disease, economic turmoil and political upheaval.
The loss and recovery marked his long career in public service. His first wife and daughter died in a car accident days after his election to the Senate. In 2015, he buried his eldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer. In a tearful farewell speech to his home state, Delaware, on the eve of his inauguration, Biden said, “I only have one regret: he is not here.”
Biden’s rise to the presidency, the fulfillment of a life’s dream, was paved with false starts and bad times. A plagiarism scandal affected his first run. Obfuscated by the historic candidacy of his Democratic opponents in 2008, Biden withdrew before the Iowa conventions. Then, in 2015, still mourning the loss of her son, Biden chose not to run.
But Trump’s presidency plagued him. Trump’s failure to forcibly condemn white supremacist violence in Charlottesville was Biden’s motivation to launch a third presidential candidacy. Biden presented himself as a rebuke to Trump – an empathic figure shaped by personal tragedy who believed he had something to offer the country in a time of cascading national tragedy.
A historic number of Americans, exhausted by the chaos and division of the past four years, elected Biden in November.
At the end of the ceremony, the new president will review the military troops, a tradition that aims to symbolize the peaceful transfer of power. Resigning from the renowned parade along Pennsylvania Avenue, the new president, vice president and their families will be escorted to the White House by representatives from all branches of the armed forces in one block.
Biden’s day began when he left Blair House for a Catholic mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the Apostle, where he joined the second couple and Congress leaders in a demonstration of bipartisanship and ritual. Biden, a man of deep faith, will only be the second Catholic president, after John Kennedy.