In years to come, we may recall Wednesdays inauguration ceremony by reading again Amanda Gormans words, delivered to a spellbound inauguration assembly (Biden offers a message of resilience in Americas winter of peril, 20 January). The authority of her poem comes from the clarity of its imagery and the uncompromising challenge of its rhetoric.
What it says ensures that, to relief at the end of Americas political nightmare and goodwill towards the two principals in the drama that unfolded, must now be added the assertion that we can raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.Frank PaiceNorwich
Amid the analysis of Joe Bidens inauguration speech, it is worth noting that he referred to the evil of racism twice, specifically mentioning systemic racism. At a time when the UKs Conservative government is determined to pretend systemic racism doesnt exist, this is refreshing.
But is any Labour politician willing to show a similar awareness of how racism operates in Great Britain? Will Keir Starmer step up to the mark and challenge the governments denial and strongly condemn the systemic racism that blights the lives of too many people in this country? I worry that the Labour leaderships fear of a culture wars backlash has already induced a reluctance to speak out for these fundamental values.Geoff SkinnerKensal Green, London
Perhaps Donald Trump could take solace in the fact that the crowd at his inauguration was definitely bigger than that at President Bidens. Size matters to him after all.Joan FurtadoWhitworth, Lancashire
When Joe Biden was sworn in as the nations 46th president, he became just the second Catholic to hold the office, after having been just the fourth Catholic to be nominated by a major party. (Democrats nominated Al Smith in 1928, John F. Kennedy in 1960 and John Kerry in 2004.) A theme of Mr. Bidens inauguration speech was healing the deep divisions in the United States, but the theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli argues in his new book that polarization in the church is also a challenge to Mr. Bidens presidency.
In Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, Mr. Faggioli explores how Mr. Bidens faith played a central role in his campaign, how U.S. Catholics challenging Pope Francis could also cause headaches for the Biden administration and why he thinks the Vatican and United States are poised to work together in the immediate future to protect democracy and stability throughout the world.
Below is a telephoneinterview with Mr. Faggioli, which has been edited for length and clarity.
You wrote that the country has no problem with [Mr. Bidens] being Catholic, but a not-insignificant segment of the American Churchfrom among its bishops, its clergy, and its faithfulhas a problem with his Catholicism. What do you mean by that?
In my research on the previous Catholic candidates for president, it was clear that there were Catholics who were not really happy with those candidates, but it never became an inter-Catholic issue during the campaigns. After the election of Kennedy, having a Catholic president was a moment of pride and unity among Catholics. Thats something you dont find now because the culture wars, whatever that means, have really reshaped political parties and churches, including the Catholic Church. Right now what drives the religious identity in this country is not being a Catholic, being a Protestant or being Orthodox but what kind of Catholic, what kind of Protestant, what kind of Orthodox.
This is something that Biden will have to navigate that John Kennedy never had to deal with. This could be an obstacle, but it could also be an advantage in that there are very few other Catholics in the public square who have as credible a faith as Bidens. You may agree or not with him politically, but hes authentic; hes not fake; hes not playing church.
Biden made his Catholic faith a central part of the campaign, you write in the book. How did he do this? To whom did it appeal?
I think its clear especially if you compare his campaign to the four previous Catholic candidates. Each of them had to make their Catholic faith private. Because their faith was under attack during their campaigns, their defensive move was to say, Im Catholic, but it really doesnt matter to my politics. Thats something Biden didnt do and didnt have to do because theres no longer a massive anti-Catholic movement in this country.
You could see by the way he mentioned important Catholic figures like Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis, and when he mentioned the German Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis. This was not a campaign play because its something youve always seen in Joe Biden, like in his interviews with Stephen Colbert, so that came out quite naturally during the campaign.
This is part of the appeal because you may not agree with Joe Biden on all issues, but I sense that many American believers can see something in his faith that is true, that is authentic in him.
Are there similarities between Mr. Biden and Pope Francis that may help a working relationship?
Contrary to the times of Al Smith or John Kennedy or John Kerry, right now there is a very good common ground between the White House of Biden and the Vatican.
[They share] the fact that Biden and Pope Francis were elected to the highest office when they were almost in retirement or even beyond retirement and they are representatives and leaders of two very divided communities. But the most important thing they have in common is the Catholic opposition against one is almost the same as Catholic opposition against the other.
So theres a very significant overlapideologically, culturally, politicallybetween the Trump movement domestically and the anti-Francis movement. Since 2015, I believe they have been inseparable. So they will understand that they have a common thread, a common antagonist.
And this will help, I believe, shape a good relationship in the short- and medium-term. In the long-term, the Vatican and the West, they still have important differences. And those differences will emerge in time, I believe, but not right now, because the emergency threat against democracy, against the certain stability, is so serious that all long-term differences will be set aside for a while.
Im curious if Mr. Biden being Catholic is a pro or a con when it comes to his relationship with the Vatican, specifically around some of the life issues where there are clearly differences in opinion.
Historically, it is a problem or it can be an obstacle. But not right now, I think, only because of Francis. Pope Francis has never used the same language of social conservatives on abortion. And so there is there is clearly a difference between the language of the Democrats and the Catholic Church on abortion. But there is also a difference between the way the Vatican right now talks about abortion and the way Republicans talk about abortion. And so this is different now from what it was like with John Kerry and John Paul II and Barack Obama and Benedict.
Both Biden and the Vatican have problems with U.S. bishops, and this is a serious problem. They understand each other because they face an isolated U.S. episcopate that has become impossible to deal with, both for the pope and the Catholic president.
The Vatican always wants to have good relations with the U.S. president, no matter how distant some internal foreign domestic policies are.
You say U.S. bishops denied Biden any kind of honeymoon, even acting somewhat antagonistically after his election when they formed a special working group to consider how to work with a Catholic president. How do you expect this will impact relations between the U.S. church and the new president?
Well, we dont know. We have heard nothing more about the working group.
I believe that a change of language is required. But what it takes is something that I dont see happening yet, which is, indeed, rethinking what happened in these last few years. Honestly, I never expected the U.S. bishops to say to Catholics, go vote for Joe Biden. I never expected that. But it was also unexpected to see the kind of blindness that there was, not in all of them, but especially in some of them, until the very end of the Trump presidency as to what [the former] president meant for many Catholics, especially Latino Catholics and African-American Catholics.
So there has to be some kind of historical and moral reckoning with the failure in understanding what was happening. And thats when they can understand and learn more how to deal with a president who is not perfect, as a Catholic or as a politician. But certainly, I dont believe it helped the cause of the Catholic Church in this country to look hostile to a Catholic president from day one. This can only damage the church and can do very little to help Catholics influence, rightfully, decisions on life issues.
Do you see any bishops who are friendly to the incoming administration? Will they have a role to play in speaking for U.S. Catholics?
I think they will. Especially [Cardinal] Wilton Gregory because hes the ordinary of Washington, D.C., but also [Chicago archbishop] Cardinal Cupich, [Newark archbishop] Cardinal Tobin, Bishop McElroy [of San Diego]. But its a small group, honestly. But I believe they will play an important role. But honestly, it will be few bishops, but also the Jesuits in this country, as well as other Catholic voices that are not necessarily bishops or clergy. I dont see a swift turn of the U.S. bishops in the next few weeks or months. I dont.
What gives you hope about the new administration?
What we saw on Tuesday evening at the memorial service for the victims of Covid in Washington, D.C., is a great sign of hope. The symbolical and spiritual resources of this country are immense, and Joe Biden has demonstrated already his ability to draw from them.
Heres your assignment. At the end of the week, be prepared to write a short essay of not more than 500 words explaining why the United States has avoided the long and bloody religious wars that were so common in every other place of this earth?
Phones rang. Classmates traded ideas. We searched the textbooks. Nothing!
The next Monday when class resumed, the professor raised the question again for discussion before we began to write the dreaded essay.
Well, Sarah, he asked What do you think?
Without a seconds hesitation, she responded, Friends in heaven! The United States had friends in heaven.
The professor had a puzzled look on his face but this didnt deter Sarah who went on to explain. When she finished, there wasnt time to write an essay.
Sarah got a well deserved Ain the course.
Though not exactly in these words, heres what Sarah had to say.
The United States, arguably the most religiously vibrant nation on the earth did not become so despite its separation of church and state but because of it.
At the outset of this country a number of states established their own official churches until 1833 when government support for the official churches began to decline.
Then came the Civil War resulting in a fundamental change in the relationship between the federal government and the states which found expression in the Fourteenth Amendment. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive to any person life, liberty, or property without due process of law: nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. Thats the reason we have fights and not battles over prayer in school.
The second major influence came with immigration. In 1789, the population of the United States was 99 percent Protestant. Today it ranges just above 53 percent. Today, the United States is home to more Hindus than Unitarians, more Muslims than Congregationalists, and more Buddhists than Jews. The changes in demography changed the notion that the United States could any longer be conceived of a a Protestant or Even a Christian nation.
Meanwhile the relationship between conservative Protestants and Catholics improve. While early years created hard feelings over support of parochial schools, a more common sense of ecumenism has demanded less separation of church and state. This has eventually shifted to pro-religion forces who seek less separation between church and state and secular anti-religious groups demanding more separation through the courts all of which has morphed into what we now recognize as culture wars."
The courts wrestled with two conflicting points. The establishment clause allowing different points of view, and the free exercise which moved from thought to practice. People could believe, for example as good Mormons, but if polygamy were allowed, it could change the fabric of society. These were tough questions which required accommodation between belief and practice.
The Supreme Court has become the battleground for scores of difficult cases involving religious freedom. Both sides of any question can probably agree that the answers are never completely clear and always difficult. Christians may have to put away their Bibles in the school cafeteria, but they have total freedom in other parts of their live. Occasional misuse of government funds is balanced by good citizens crafting ways to help people of faith without distorting religion. Even religious minorities who experience discomfort over occasional imposition of Judeo-Christian rhetoric and ritual nonetheless live at a time and place where religious minorities enjoy more protection than ever.
Yes, put it all together and Sarah came up with the right answer. The reason why the United States, unlike others nations of the world, has been able to avoid pogroms, and bloody religious conflicts is actually quite simple.
The writer Alistair Cooke once observed: As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. That is a kind way of saying that the British are always a few years behind the Americans, emulating them and then pretending that we came up with whatever it is we are mimicking, or coming up with a uniquely British version of it.
For example, Britains allegedly evidence-based involvement in the Iraq war was largely as President George W Bush wrote in an internal memo months before military action a matter of it following the USs lead. So much of the special relationship between the two countries hinges on this keeping up of appearances, where the British political classes who like to maintain their nation is the superior of the two, the original superpower can admire and obey while holding on to the fiction that the UK is a more restrained country, less prone to the excesses of the other.
Margaret Thatcher hit both of these notes, fawning over the US president, Ronald Reagan, when she said that they both had almost identical beliefs even though they were from very different backgrounds. And on her first visit to the White House, she said that the two countries were inextricably entwined because George Washington himself was a British subject until well after his 40th birthday.
But then Donald Trump became president and upset this taut balance of adulation and snootiness. He publicly flaunted the influence over Britain that had always been wielded in secret, humiliated Theresa May, insulted London mayor Sadiq Khan, and took a swipe at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. He flourished the power and vulgarity of the US without any of its refining rhetoric or protocol. And the country he presided over became not just one of inelegant indulgence but a darker place where white supremacists, backed by the White House itself, marched in the streets.
With that erosion of reputation, Trumps America has gained a new utility for the British: it is not a place that Britain secretly looks up to, but a place that Britain is unlike; a place that demonstrates why things over here are not to be compared with how bad it is over there. A country that is struggling with its demons, and which we observe from a safe distance while lamenting its decline.
Whether its the USs culture wars, its race crisis or its succumbing to far-right politics and white supremacy, these are things that do not map neatly on to Britains faultlines. Poor America, the country we no longer share beliefs or an inextricably entwined history with.
The distancing began in earnest in the summer of Black Lives Matter, but the storming of the Capitol was the final dividing line. Boris Johnson was appalled at the disgraceful scenes and unreservedly condemned Trumps incitement of the crowd, even though he had little to say when Trump was building momentum for the insurrection in the preceding weeks.
The prime ministers transition from spectating to actively condemning was in part because the scenes in Washington DC were simply too shocking to be silent on. But the more important factor is that Trump is on the way out. He can be repudiated with no risk of blowback or diplomatic crisis. Had the events at the Capitol happened in the middle of Trumps term in office, I would wager that much of the scrambling to denounce, from Twitter to Johnson, would have been absent.
And so again, circumstances help the UK to distance itself, pretend it was not complicit in Trumps ascendancy, that there was no aiding and abetting of the president and his extremist supporters (despite refusing to condemn his Muslim flight ban, and rolling out the reddest of red carpets for him). The scenes at the Capitol serve a useful purpose, which is to overshadow the path that led to the steps of the building: with images so vivid and rich, and with so many colourful characters, we become preoccupied with their detail and fail to see all the arteries that nourished them.
The insurrection was just one point on a continuum that involves not just Trump and the Republican party, but an entire hinterland of conservative politics. It includes those in Congress who didnt quite disavow Trump, and respectable conservative pundits who, even if they repudiated the presidents most extreme acts, still played on his themes, such as the conspiring leftwing elite who hate the real America. The connective tissue between Trump and the white supremacist on the street is much more fibrous than it serves many to admit.
In the UK we are prone to the same impulses of denial using the high-octane events of the past few weeks to claim that a difference in degree means all the difference in the world. The reality is that, even though our parliament wasnt stormed, British members of parliament were jostled and abused on their way to work by hardcore Brexit supporters. One of those MPs was assassinated by a far-right nationalist. Another almost was.
Britains culture war is so potent that we have our own mobs scuffling with the police, responding to the dog whistles of our own government. We have respectable sections in the media who pump out conspiratorial theories about the woke and the elite, and now preach against mask-wearing and lockdowns. When the far right spills out on to the streets, claiming lives and attacking democracies, its the result of a million compounded complicities and complacencies.
Like a jigsaw, when these details come together they create a larger image. Today that image is Donald Trump. When he is gone, the jigsaw will be broken up again and both the US and the UK will choose not to see what together those pieces can create.
MANY PRESIDENTS assume office in the grip of a crisis. Joe Biden faces at least four. Covid-19 is a public-health disaster: the disease has killed over 400,000 in America and continues to rage while a disorganised vaccination drive sputters. The virus has wreaked economic devastation: 10m fewer Americans are employed than before the pandemic; two-thirds of children cannot attend school in person; one in eight adults are skipping meals. Bitter divisions over racial justice fester. And a partisan rancour has poisoned Americans faith in their democracy.
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Mr Biden acknowledged this in his inaugural address on January 20th. He spoke to an America that feels perhaps more deeply divided than at any time since Abraham Lincoln delivered his second in 1865, when the Confederate rebellion was in its death throes. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right...let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nations wounds, urged Lincoln. Two weeks after an insurrectionist mob hoisted the Confederate battle flag in the Capitolsomething Confederate soldiers had not done during the civil warMr Biden called for a moment of national healing. Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
During his campaign Mr Biden vowed to restore Americas soul. That is a daunting task. After Donald Trumps supporters vandalised the Capitol, an impeachment trial for the former president looms. At least 25,000 members of the armed forces were stationed in Washington, DCmore than are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq combinedto secure the peaceful transition of power. For the first time in 150 years the outgoing president skipped the ceremony. More than 80% of Mr Trumps supporters believe his damaging lie that the election was stolen.
And yet Mr Biden looks well suited to the work at hand. He assumes the presidency after nearly half a century in government. He is a conciliatory elder statesman who may serve only one term, not a culture warrior hellbent on securing re-election. His cadre of experienced appointees (see graphic) will immediately wield the tools of the administrative state to undo much of the damage of the Trump era. Harsh immigration policies will be lifted. The drive to weaken environmental protections will be reversed. European allies jittery about Americas commitment to mutual defence and combating climate change will be reassured.
More lasting change will require legislation. Both chambers of Congress are under Democratic control, albeit by the narrowest of margins. The Democrats hold the House of Representatives by just four seats. They will retain control of the Senatewhich is split equally between the two partiesthanks only to the deciding vote of Kamala Harris, the vice-president.
Marshalling enough support to pass serious reforms will be possible, but will require bipartisan negotiations and a ruthless mastery of the Senate last demonstrated by Lyndon Johnson. Any lone dissident Democratic senator, of left-leaning or conservative convictions, or a sufficiently large bloc of Democrats in the House (a squad of six, say) will be able to scuttle Mr Bidens proposals in the face of unified Republican opposition. The filibuster, a procedure which allows an obstreperous minority to block most laws unless 60 of the 100 senators vote otherwise, will almost certainly remain in place.
As a result, those on the left of the new presidents party are destined to be disappointed. During the Democratic primary Mr Biden rejected their most contentious proposals, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and defunding the police. Other sweeping ideas such as packing the Supreme Court with new justices or ditching the electoral college look impossible.
And yet Mr Bidens opposition to his partys most radical ideas has obscured the fact that he hopes to govern well to the left of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. His New Deal-esque agenda will retain populist economic ideas, such as minimum-wage increases, industrial policy and substantial government spending.
The early days of the administration will be dominated by legislation to contain covid-19 and further cushioning its economic fallout. The logic is clear. The proposals to build back better, as the new presidents team calls it, will address Americas most urgent crises. They may also attract Republican votes and should conserve Mr Bidens political capital for more fraught matters later on. That does not mean that they will be modest.
The first order of business, which Mr Biden outlined in a speech on January 14th, will be another covid-19 relief bill, costing $1.9trn. It would provide $160bn to pay for a national vaccine programme, expanded testing and contact-tracers. It would shovel more cash to Americans via cheques of $1,400 per person, increases in unemployment benefits and a temporarily enhanced child tax credit (a policy which would, almost on its own, halve poverty among children). Republicans may balk at the costtheir worries about the deficit and debt are noticeably more acute under Democratic presidentsor some of its provisions, such as increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. But the proposal cannot be accused, as some of Mr Obamas were, of pre-emptive compromise.
Mr Bidens economic team has dubbed this bill a rescue measure. Hard on its heels will come a recovery bill, the details of which are yet to be unveiled. If the first foray into policymaking is any indication, it too will probably be a juggernaut. The recovery bill will propose massive infrastructure spending, perhaps the $2trn pledged in the campaign. It would also be the primary vehicle for some of Mr Bidens most ambitious climate-change pledges. Mr Biden has promised to ensure universal broadband access, spend $400bn on energy and climate research and create 10m new clean-energy jobs on the way to decarbonising the electricity sector by 2035 and the economy as a whole by 2050. The trillions proposed will also channel Mr Bidens neo-Rooseveltian instincts: he nostalgically aims for a domestic manufacturing renaissance powered by unionised workers.
These are opening, maximalist positions. They give a sense of the scale of Mr Bidens ambitions to exploit the crises he facesand the fractious state of Republicans fighting over the legacy of Trumpismto remake the American economy. They hint at his strategy for placating the left-wing gadflies of his party (who are also grudgingly thrilled at the diversity of his otherwise conventionally centrist appointees). Mr Biden seems to have grasped that unified control of government is a necessary but not sufficient condition for passing major legislation. Mr Clinton in 1993, Mr Obama in 2009 and Mr Trump in 2017 all came to Washington with the gift of an agreeable Congress. They squandered much of their political capital on trying to push through health-care legislation. Only Mr Obama succeeded.
One clich of American politics is that such legislative overreach produces the swing back to the opposition party typically seen during a presidents first mid-term elections. The last five presidents have lost on average 31 seats in the House of Representatives during these elections (and two in the Senate). For Mr Biden, that would spell the loss of both chambers, probably dooming the chances of any serious lawmaking for the final two years of his term.
Democrats have learned from the drubbing Mr Obama received in 2010. The issues that provoke deep partisan divisions and sap political capitalsuch as sweeping reforms of the immigration systemmay be introduced for debate in Congress but any serious action will probably have to wait.
Even with such caution and concerted whipping from party leaders, Mr Biden will have to work hard. He has two routes to success. The first would be to attract enough Republican supportten senators under the current configurationto neuter the threat of a filibuster. Some who remember the obstinacy of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate under Mr Obama, think it is foolish to expect any differently of him or his caucus. But Mr Biden and his allies maintain a starry-eyed optimism for bipartisan dealmaking. If the Republicans will recognise this as a watershed moment for them, their party and our country, I think theres nothing we cant do together, says Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware.
Mr Trumps debasement of his party might be the deciding factor. A few moderate Republican senators most disaffected with Trumpismsuch as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romneycould band with conservative Democrats to become the crucial negotiating bloc for all major legislation.
The alternative is reconciliation, a special procedure for passing an annual budget which cannot be filibustered and so could squeeze through with Democratic votes alone. But it has its limits. The rules for such bills are fiendishly complicated. Most importantly policy changes must be principallynot incidentallybudgetary, and cannot add to the deficit over the long run (usually ten years). Those restrictions create fiscal cliffs and lead to huge swings in future tax and spending. They also demand kludgey redrafting to ensure that they are mainly budgetary, says Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution.
Much of Mr Bidens agendathe parts related to taxation and spendingcould be passed through reconciliation. The covid-relief cheques, the clean-energy investment plan, enhanced unemployment insurance and child tax credits look achievable. So does the promised repeal of many of Mr Trumps tax cuts. But other ambitious ideas may fall victim to internecine Democratic squabbles, including a carbon tax, lowering the Medicare eligibility age, expanding subsidies for child care, and some student-loan forgiveness.
Reconciliation is less useful for ideas that are principally regulatorysuch as a national minimum-wage rise or an ambitious clean-energy standard. It could not be used for other priorities of the left, such as immigration reform or new voting- and civil-rights legislation. In theory reconciliation can be used only for the annual budget. But since Republicans did not pass a budget resolution for the current fiscal year, the Biden administration will have two opportunities in quick succession to employ the procedure. One could be devoted to the rescue package and the other to the recovery package. If both become law, they could be the start of an unusually successful presidencyunmarred by the gridlock and frustration of the Obama era.
Mr Biden departs from Mr Obamas cerebral approach to legislating but he shares his view of the expansive powers of the administrative state. Within hours of his inauguration he signed a slew of executive orders signalling the end of the Trump era. The ban on travel from certain Muslim countries was rescinded. America will swiftly rejoin the Paris climate accord and World Health Organisation. The administration will organise a global climate-change summit. The drawn-out process of reversing Mr Trumps deregulations on emissions will begin, though these will probably be tied up in the courts for years.
Federal regulators will perk up. Under the former president, the Environmental Protection Agency was slow to enforce rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was effectively neutered. Both will pursue their mandates with new vigour. The broad powers already afforded to the Department of Justice to investigate police departments and civil-rights violations could provide a solid start to the current rather nebulous racial-justice agenda.
These domestic concerns will almost certainly dominate at least the first year of Mr Bidens presidency. Though he has taken a keen interest in foreign policy throughout his long career, it will take a back seatfor now at least. To be an effective global power, you have to be stable at home, says Nicholas Burns, a professor of diplomacy at Harvard. Mr Biden will not be able to ignore the demands of the rest of the world entirely. Most pressing will be restoring relations with allies in NATO and elsewhere after a frosty four years. An arms-control treaty with Russia expiring in February will force hasty negotiations. Plans will have to be made to fulfil Mr Bidens pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the biggest foreign-policy matter to loom over the Biden administration will be managing great-power competition with China. It worries me that weve got these two giant superpowers moving as if by remote control towards conflict, says Angus King, an independent senator from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats. Mr King believes that a stable, bipartisan consensus on the subject is within reach. This is a place where President Trumps instincts were correct. His implementation was wrong. The fact that China needed to be confronted, I think, was absolutely correct. Indeed, there is no indication when or even if Mr Biden would lift the tariffs put in place on Chinese goods. Unlike Mr Trumps fixation on bilateral trade deficits, these will instead be justified on grounds of human-rights abuse, theft of intellectual property and climate change.
The spectre of Mr Trump will linger. The new administration may have to get through his impeachment trialwhich would be the first to be held after a president has left office. Mr Biden, who has tried to stay above the partisan fray on the efforts, worries that a Senate engrossed in evidence against his predecessor for alleged high crimes will dally in confirming his nominees and debating his covid-relief package. Others disagree. I happen to think we can do two things at once, says Mr King, the senator from Maine. We can have, for example, hearings on nominations in the mornings and the trial in the afternoon. I dont think the trial is going to take as long as the prior one did. In fact, the jury in this case were all witnesses.
Whether or not Mr Trump is convicted, the damage done by his presidency is deep. Nearly 70% of American voters think members of the other party are a threat to the United States and its people; 50% conclude that they are downright evil. Such feelings predate Mr Trump and indeed created the conditions for his ascent. His innovation was to emphasise white grievance and add a dangerous strain of disbelief in the legitimacy of elections. Having shattered norms like the belief in democracy and the non-violent transition of power, Mr Trump cannot be counted on to adhere to the lesser professional courtesy of refraining from criticising his successor. He did not shy away from inflaming racial animus or culture wars while in office. It would be naive to expect more dignity having left it, as he eyes a comeback in 2024.
In his first inaugural address, as the Union fractured, Lincoln appealed to the better angels of Americans nature. His pleas could not prevent the worst conflict in American history. There are echoes of other moments of crisis in this transitionthe recession presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Mr Obama; the pandemic ignored by Woodrow Wilson; the racial strife under Dwight Eisenhower and Johnson. For a president to navigate any one of these crises would be gruelling. To navigate them all at once will be a formidable job. Yet that is Mr Bidens charge.
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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Good luck, Joe"