Joe Biden becomes president with a plea that ‘politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire’

Joseph R. Biden Jr. took the oath of office to become the 46th President of the United States Wednesday with a call for unity and healing to lead the country out of a chaotic period of ferocious strife, a devastating pandemic, and personal suffering.

“This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge. And unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America. If we do that, I guarantee you, we will not fail,” Biden said in a ceremony at a cold and blustery U.S. Capitol.

“We will get through this together,” he later said. “Together.”

Biden, 78, reached the pinnacle of American government more than 50 years after winning his first election to the New Castle County Council in Delaware, at the age of 27. As he arrived for the ceremony, he exchanged a vigorous fist bump with former President Barack Obama, whom he had served as vice president. He swore his oath on a thick family bible dating to the 1800s that he has used for decades.

Minutes earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris swore her oath and became the first woman to hold that high office, as well as the first Black person and Asian American. She used one bible from a family friend and one once owned by former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She wore purple, meant to signal togetherness of the country’s red and blue political factions.

Kamala Harris is sworn in as Vice President by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as her husband Doug Emhoff holds the Bible.
ANDREW HARNIK / AP
Kamala Harris is sworn in as Vice President by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as her husband Doug Emhoff holds the Bible.
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Biden takes the helm of a country reeling from historic health and economic crises, sharp divisions over race, and, in many corners, coursing with anger and misinformation fueled by former President Donald Trump.

The jarring signs of the challenges facing the new administration were all around.

Biden spoke at a building where one of the darkest moments in recent U.S. history unfolded exactly two weeks earlier, when Trump supporters violently stormed the building attempting to stop the certification of Biden’s lawful election victory.

“Democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile,” Biden said in his roughly 20-minute address. “At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”

The Capitol lawn and the National Mall, usually packed with pageantry for inaugurations, were almost entirely empty. The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 people in the U.S. and in recent days reached its deadliest stretch, already meant crowds would be kept away and the usual parade and galas impossible. The response to the Capitol insurrection added a militarized backdrop to a day usually meant to embody the foundations of a peaceful democracy.

» READ MORE: Biden fans celebrate in an eerie, locked down Washington: ‘We’re not going to be intimidated’

Biden arrived to an edgy capital city marked by locked-down streets, fences topped with razor wire and a heavy presence of uniformed National Guard troops carrying rifles built for combat.

When Biden made the traditional trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, it was in near silence. His footsteps were audible on television.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said he was “sad” as he arrived at his inauguration seat.

“It’s a military camp,” he said, his voice breaking as he walked away.

More than 10 million Americans remain out of work. Many more have seen their lives put on hold, joys sapped, and futures thrown into doubt. A coronavirus vaccine offers a measure of hope, but also a titanic logistical challenge.

National Guard soldiers near the Capitol on the day of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration Wednesday.
JESSICA GRIFFIN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
National Guard soldiers near the Capitol on the day of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration Wednesday.
Biden, with a straightforward delivery that eschewed the soaring rhetoric often deployed by new presidents, described a “winter of peril” and, repeatedly, one solution.

“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity, unity,” he said.

“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” he said later. “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.”

Poet laureate Amanda Gorman delivered a rousing recital of her work “The Hill We Climb,” including the lines, “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. ... But while democracy can be periodically delayed, It can never be permanently defeated.”

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, said the day “lifted my heart.”

“It meant a great deal, I think, to so many Americans to see the ceremony conducted on the platform where just a few weeks ago, marauders and terrorists had been attempting to stop democracy,” Clinton said.

» READ MORE: It was a ‘surreal’ inauguration for Pennsylvania lawmakers at the site of the Capitol insurrection

Biden never directly mentioned Trump who, breaking yet another tradition, declined to attend and instead flew Wednesday morning to his Florida resort. But at several points, the new president took aim at the culture of lies Trump fostered, including by falsely and relentlessly claiming the election was stolen.

“We must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured,” Biden said. He also called for confronting climate change and rising white supremacy and political extremism.

Aside from Trump, the country’s most prominent Republicans all attended, including many who had refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Attendees included former President George W. Bush, outgoing Vice President Mike Pence, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

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“Our institutions were tested this year and our institutions passed the test,” Ryan said.

Biden, who spent his early years in Scranton before his family moved to Delaware, and who has long emphasized his blue-collar upbringing and ties to Pennsylvania, fell back on his roots to empathize with struggling Americans.

“I understand, like my dad, they lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering, ‘Can I keep my health care? Can I pay my mortgage?’” he said.

While Trump used such worries to sow anger, Biden called for “tolerance and humility.”

“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden said. “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”

» READ MORE: Welcome to the presidency, Joe Biden. Please solve all these crises.

After a year in which racism was pushed to the center of the national debate, and a presidency that openly stoked racial divisions, Biden’s inauguration embraced the country’s diversity.

Harris was administered her oath by Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, the fist Latina on the court. Singer Jennifer Lopez injected a burst of Spanish into her rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat, reveled in being ”a son of immigrants married to an immigrant that now has a chance to be a part of this historic day.”

In the crowd were the father of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot by police in Wisconsin, and an aunt of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Ky.