Biden hits the right note

Joe Biden only needed to avoid threatening civil war to be sure that this inauguration was better than the last. Yet that’s not to say that America’s problems are now solved or that Biden is even sure to be a president well matched to this monumental task, but a new sense of clarity and moral purpose was more than enough to clear what was an extremely low bar.

The new president’s words conveyed “meanings” (remember those?) rather than functioning as gestures towards an aggrieved base. It was a speech light on detail, filled with “big tent” ambition, whilst recent events allowed him to present himself as the product of a functioning system of government rather than a partisan figure. “We celebrate the triumph not of a candidate,” he began, “but of a cause, the cause of democracy”.

Hurrah!

The body of the speech was little more than an effective but limited set of would-be aphorisms. Some were familiar from his campaign (“We have never, ever, ever failed in America when we have acted together”) but most felt coined for the occasion, expressing a sense of direction (“History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity”) and opportunity (“We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.”)

It was all aspirational and, arguably, rather naïve. There is a good chance that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will strike deals (now in the minority, McConnell will leverage whatever power he holds to look like he’s not entirely obstructionist) but all this idealism doesn’t disguise the hard reality of a balance of power that might tip again in two years. This is why Biden must soon focus on the midterms, where he could quite easily lose one or both houses. The challenge for Biden is to prove that his America isn’t turning into the Venezuela 2.0 prophesied by Republicans and any effective work in the short term will give him more room to change things over four years. A quick rollout of stimulus cheques would certainly do him no harm.

Despite the speech’s tendency towards soundbites, the best moment involved silence. Biden took a moment to pray for those that had died from Covid-19. It was touching, certainly, but the 46th president clearly understands the need for something other than the high-frequency chatter designed to drown out the noise. A President who looks most of his 78 years might suit a nation in need of a more measured presidency.

The result was a speech significantly better than anything he had given during his campaign and it set the tone on a day that was filled with small unassuming details such as the little cup of coffee (with a saucer!) on the Resolute Desk as he set about signing executive orders. Many of those orders would revoke decisions made by his predecessor. He paused to read the text before setting his pen (not a Sharpie) to each order, but he didn’t then show them up to cameras as the previous occupant did on every damn occasion and there was no assistant to help him. It made it look all rather clumsy but in the way that bureaucracy is clumsy. Perhaps in the coming weeks we will even see the desk a little untidy as is indicative of a functioning office. That desk has barely been a desk for four years. It’s been more like the Resolute Coaster for all the Diet Cokes delivered at the push of a button.

The day was a reset, then, where banality felt novel. There was a White House Press conference where Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, challenged recent norms by appearing sane. Biden would then appear at a Zoom event where he swore in members of this administration. It was another telling moment as he warned them to be on their best behaviour. “If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone,” he told them, “I promise you I will fire you on the spot.” Again, small details but markedly different from the man who made “You’re fired” his catchphrase and then spent four years leaving others to do his dirty work.

Some of this is about establishing a baseline of behaviour but it is also tonal. Biden sounded tougher than he ever has or, rather, his toughness sounded more believable than some of the poses he struck on the campaign which often landed with a dull thud. This wasn’t the campaigner who would challenge opponents to do push-ups (cringeworthy every single time). Everything here was more adult and sombre. Even the masks around the event were mostly worn properly, though Bill Clinton’s was too small and resembled a piece of lady’s underwear stretched across his chin and Garth Crooks forgot to put his back on before he started to embrace members of the crowd.

The only problematic note for Democrats came at the end of the day and it was the usual problematic note that many won’t see as a problem. They do themselves no favours by boasting of their connections to the world of entertainment. The usual suspects appeared in their usual guises: Tom Hanks was so very Tom Hanks on the steps to the Lincoln Memorial and then there was Katy Perry, John Legend, and Bruce Springsteen. Earlier in the day, Lady Gaga had turned up to sing the national anthem adorned with something that looked like a seagull but might have been an eagle.

It is not that any of this was necessarily bad (again, Covid restrictions made the event smaller and better paced) but the need to make politics entertaining is precisely how America got into this mess in the first place. Republicans might lack star power (James Woods doesn’t count) but they do use that to their advantage. It makes them look serious, which isn’t a bad look for any party cherishing power.

And that, ultimately, is what Biden needs to prove. He needs to cherish and wield power properly. He needs to make his party look hardened to the task of government rather than the floppy alternative, so helpfully symbolised by Bernie Sanders who channelled his inner Michael Foot by turning up dressed like everybody’s favourite Grandpa from a Roald Dahl story. Perhaps the big manilla envelope he carried in his outlandishly-mittened hands contained a golden ticket to some chocolate factory (fully unionised, of course) but it was a reminder of how close America came to a Bernie candidacy and, no doubt, a second term for the man whose name it is now a luxury to avoid mentioning.