The Daily - The Inauguration of Joe Biden

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Unity was the byword of President Biden’s Inaugural Address.The speech was an attempt to turn the page. But can this be achieved without, as many in the Democratic coalition believe, a full reckoning with and accountability of how America got to this point of division?Today, we explore the defining messages of the president’s inaugural address. Guests: Astead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times; Emily Cochrane, a congressional reporter for The Times.  For an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the latest edition here.Background reading: President Biden spoke of a return to the ordinary discord of democracy, with a reminder that “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.” You can read the full annotated speech here.For many in an exhausted, divided nation, the inauguration was a sea change, not just a transition.At the made-for-TV swearing-in, rituals of normalcy ran into reminders that these are anything but normal times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily 

Good morning. I'm Emily Cochran. I'm a congressional reporter for The Times. It is about 8 AM on January 20th, and I am walking to Capitol Hill to help cover the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president. testing. When he walks in, you think this kid, like, he gets a lot of respect because he's doing it so hard. Hi. Yep, thank you. Have a good day.

The first checkpoint. This was always going to be an unusual inauguration, different from any other and more limited than any other because of the pandemic. But the breach of the Capitol on January 6th has transformed this even further. Thank you, sir. Alright, where are you headed to? Headed to the Capitol, sir.

Can I see your inaugural badge? Can I see your face, too? Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I will be inside the Capitol today. Hence the various checkpoints that I am not going through. At this point, I've lost track of how many police officials, guardsmen, and women that I've walked by.

They're all very nice. But to have such a militarized presence... It's still jarring. Still very jarring. Very dry. It's about 9, 10. Inside it feels more normal. There's a lot more hustle and bustle. There are lines of people waiting to get through security, saying hello to people, members greeting each other,

saying good morning. This building and its inhabitants still have some scars from two weeks ago. But it is remarkable how so many unseen people took the aftermath of a mob and made the building beautiful again. It's a level of strange normalcy. Even though things very much are not. Things very much are not. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today. Watching on TV, it did look relatively normal. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 59th inaugural ceremonies. On the steps of the Capitol. The 2021 inaugural theme, our determined democracy, forging a more perfect union. Surrounded by members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, former presidents, but no crowd. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president. I, Kamala Devi Harris, solemnly swear...

That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Making history as the first African American, Asian American, and woman to hold that office. That I will well and faithfully discharge. That I will well and faithfully discharge. The duties of the office on which I am about to enter. The duties of the office upon which I am about to enter.

So help me God. So help me God. So help me God. Then came the swearing-in of President Joe Biden. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear. I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute that I will faithfully execute

the office of President of the United States the office of President of the United States who spoke to a nation divided as never before. Protect and defend. Preserve, protect, and defend. The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States. So help you God.

So help me God. Congratulations, Mr. President. My colleague, Astead Herndon, was watching and analyzing the inaugural address. It's Thursday, January 21st. As I said, describe this inaugural speech for us Chief Justice Roberts Vice President Harris So he starts the speech

My distinguished guests, my fellow Americans This is America's day This is democracy's day. This is democracy's day. And immediately begins framing this as a victory for democracy. The people, the will of the people has been heard. And the will of the people has been heeded. That in the time of test and the time of challenges, that his ascension and the affirmation of the will of the people

is a moment that is worth celebrating, particularly in the same place that was almost overrun by a mob just weeks ago. Few people in our nation's history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we're in now. Once-in-a-century virus that silently stalks the country has taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II. Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed. A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us.

The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer. Joe Biden has, particularly since in his last presidential run, positioned himself as opposed to the rising forces of political extremism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism. And those are things he calls out at the start of this speech. A rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat. He says his core campaign message, that to overcome those challenges,

you have to restore the soul of the country. Requires so much more than words. Requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy. And he says you do that through unity. Unity. Unity. Right, and unity is the byword of this speech. I think he used that word 10 or 11 times.

Denying to fight the foes we face. It was an unmistakable effort to call on something that this country does not possess at the moment, which is a unified vision of itself. With unity, we can do great things, important things. There's an interesting moment around this point in the speech I said where Joe Biden seems to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that to speak of unity in this moment,

after what the country just went through since the election on Capitol Hill two weeks ago, is to risk sounding foolish, Pollyannish, out of touch. I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. I think that really is an acknowledgement of the criticism that he's had at this point for years, is an acknowledgement of the criticism that he's had at this point for years, which is that his worldview, his political vision,

does not really match the reality of where Republicans are and where the country is. And what he's saying in this moment is that I hear you, I know that. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we're all are created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. But I'm still holding steadfast to this belief that through leading from the presidency, that he can kind of wrest the country back to his will,

restore the America of Joe Biden's mind, even though we know that has not been a reality, particularly over the last four years. Through struggle, sacrifice, and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. Right. There's a real sense in this speech reality, particularly over the last four years. Through struggle, sacrifice, and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. Right. There's a real sense in this speech that he can kind of will it into being somehow. History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity. We can see each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors. We can treat each other with dignity and respect.

We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. You know, I always think back to a eulogy that Joe Biden gave for Strom Thurmond, where he talks about, I choose to believe the best about this man. The segregationist senator. Exactly. And it is that same active choice, that same optimism that Joe Biden chooses to believe about America, that in this moment, even when his political vision looks out of touch, he is choosing to believe in the country that will rise to the occasion and will come together even in the face of division.

My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this. And I believe America is so much better than this. Just look around. Here we stand in the shadow of the Capitol Dome, as was mentioned earlier, completed amid the Civil War, when the Union itself was literally hanging in the balance. Yet we endured. We prevailed. So in this speech, how does Biden talk about achieving unity beyond talking about unity? He basically presents Americans with a challenge to be better to one another. And it is a belief that we will all, through individual actions and through kind of rising to his challenge, choose to be better as a country.

Let's begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another. And his kind of ending point here is that without unity, there is no peace. Only bitterness and fury. No progress. Only exhausting outrage. No nation. Only a state of chaos. only a state of chaos. I think that that is evoking some of the emotion and images we saw in the last month that through a kind of historic assault on our democracy

that was based in that bitterness, he's saying let's choose a different path and that to do so, we all have to choose to be better to one another. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue. Rural versus urban. Conservative versus liberal.

We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts. If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes, as my mom would say, just for a moment, stand in their shoes. It feels like this was not so much an inauguration speech as a kind of sermon, right? A sermon to an angry and divided country. There's not a single reference to a policy in this sermon, right? A sermon to an angry and divided country.

There's not a single reference to a policy in this speech, right? It's not about an agenda. It is a kind of wartime message to a profoundly polarized America. I thought that also. I got flashbacks to my father, who's a pastor and can sometimes copy and paste some of the portions of this speech. I mean, you you really have someone who, to be honest, did not run that clearly on policy, obviously had them, could reference them. referenced them. But why Joe Biden is the president today is because Americans, enough Americans, really believed that the priority for this moment was not policy, was not a kind of rethinking of Americans' institutions, but a kind of ridding of Trump and Trumpism with the exact opposite.

of Trump and Trumpism with the exact opposite. And what he is pitching here and who Joe Biden is, has been a kind of sermon-esque, pastor-esque speaker, who is someone who would talk about these themes and comfort a nation in times of conflict. And I think this is the biggest moment yet from the virus, from racial inequity, from an assault on democracy, he is going back to that toolbox to say, it might seem even more bleak right now, but the same things that got us out previously will get us out again. Together, we shall write an American story of hope, not fear, of unity, not division, of light, not darkness, a story of decency and dignity, love and healing, greatness and goodness. May this be the story that guides us, the story that inspires us, and the story that tells ages yet to come, that we answer the call of history.

We met the moment. Democracy and hope, truth and justice did not die on our watch but thrive. We'll be right back. As I said, we've been talking about the content of this speech. I also want to talk about what was not in this speech because what was not in this speech feels important. For example, Joe Biden describes what must be overcome to create unity,

and you just described some of it. Lies, violence, darkness, racism, extremism, white supremacy. But Joe Biden does not, in this inaugural speech, identify who spoke those lies or who harbored those forms of hate or perpetrated those acts of violence. He names problems but does not name actors. Why do you think that was? It is a hint to how he defines unity. Unity can come through accountability, can come through justice, but those are steps that have concrete actions attached to it. We have not heard really that from Joe Biden. What we have largely heard is a sense of personal absolution, a sense of personal growth that is a moral mission,

but does not necessarily kind of corral the country in a kind of movement-esque way. And I don't think that that is surprising. Why do you think he chose not to do that? And what does it tell us? I think that this is an attempt to turn the page. He does not speak Trump's name. He does not talk specifically about some of the biggest grievances of the Trump era, but he is trying to kick off a new one that is defined by the values he holds dear. So it is an attempt by Joe Biden to move on and to set a new tone without the dealing with the root causes that allow that to fester. That is going to be the big challenge from it, is can you tackle those big goals like racism, extremism, misinformation and the like without a real comfort in making people uncomfortable, right? Can you deal with kind of the nation's original sin and original challenges without,

frankly, making a few people mad? And which one of those goals will really be the governing priority for him going forward? Will it be that sense of civility and unity and lowering the temperature? Or will it be other things that he has promised, like justice, equality, and really leaning in to making the American promise apply to all? How he can square those two things is not only something that folks will be skeptical about, but something that might make people doubt his commitment to one or the other. Right, which brings us to the question of what unity really means and looks like to Joe Biden, because he doesn't really define it in the speech. Think about the ideology that was expressed by the people who stormed the Capitol.

Think about the ideology that was expressed by the people who stormed the Capitol. The explicit rejection of democracy, the open embrace of bigotry, the real comfort with violence, not only against police officers and lawmakers, the real sense that the communities that elected Joe Biden were not equal partners in democracy. What does unity look like with those communities? What does unity look like with lawmakers who will not denounce them? How does Joe Biden move forward in terms of kind of creating this lower temperature that he talks about when the core tenets of what made something like this month's attack possible are opposed to America's founding principles. So, I mean, it is in one hand a clear political message, one that speaks to America's desire to see itself in the best possible light. But it is, in another, a real flattening of our challenges and a real downplaying of the forces that have led to this moment. And so Joe Biden has achieved his first goal, which is to defeat Donald Trump. If Joe Biden is going to achieve goals two and three and four, which were all about, you know, the kind of big isms and attacking those things, it might require abandoning that same rhetoric of unity and healing that got him to that point. Something we suspect he would do very reluctantly, given his nature, given his history. very reluctantly, given his nature, given his history. Yeah. You know, in his speech, he says,

if we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes, who is he talking about? Is he talking about standing in the shoes of folks who do not accept the right of certain people to participate in this democracy who stormed the Capitol in the name of insurrection? Or is he charging them with coming towards the kind of basic and core democratic principles? And so the question I have is, does the unity that Joe Biden seeks, is that with the folks who are attacking democracy? Or is he seeking to unite the rest of the country against those people? And I think that speaks to how big do you think the challenges that Trump exposed are? How big do you think the scenes that we saw at the Capitol building and the attempts by members of Congress to challenge the election results, how really core of a threat do you think that is to our democratic society? If you think that that is a existential threat,

that is the challenge of our time, that that is a rallying point for people to stand up, then that requires a very specific and targeted effort to combat it. But if you think it is a blip in the road, if you think that it was Trump-specific, if you think that it will go away as Republicans have an epiphany, as Joe Biden has called it, six months down the line, then what this is,

is him turning the page to allow that to happen. That when he sets the tone, when he speaks in new words, when he kind of charges Americans to be better, that that will be followed. There is a lot of reason to be skeptical of that vision. But it is undeniable that that is what Joe Biden believes, and that is what Joe Biden is charging the rest of us to believe.

Let's end. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. It's just after six, and I'm sitting in the rotunda on Capitol Hill. Staff is already taking down the lighting, the camera equipment, all of the things that had been temporarily set up here for inauguration. The Rotunda is my favorite place in this building, like it is for a lot of our history and our democracy with its massive paintings and statues and beautiful artwork but there's something about sitting here when no one else is around when it's really late because you're waiting for a

vote or you're staking out a meeting or really early because you got there before a hearing. There's something really special about being here and being in awe of the place and what the place represents. And to think about one more moment in history that's just been jammed into a really stunning two weeks in this building. I'm looking at the door that President Biden and Vice President Harris walked through earlier today. There's a pain in the door that's still broken from January 6th. You can see the spider cracks in the glass from where I am across the room. I think I'm still processing how the images of President Biden and Vice President Harris taking office will be juxtaposed with what I saw on January 6th.

Sort of lining the mental images side by side. But even though there's a really long way to go, that window pane is still shattered. There's so much to dissect about what happened. There's still an impeachment trial. There's still a power sharing agreement that needs to be reached in the Senate. And the division that still persists. But today was peaceful. And I'm grateful for that. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Following the inauguration, President Biden signed a series of executive orders on everything from the pandemic to climate change before making his final public appearance of the day with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden on a White House balcony. And... The chair lays before the Senate two certificates of election for the state of Georgia and a certificate of appointment to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of former Senator Kamala D. Harris of California.

Democrats formally claimed control of the Senate on Wednesday. Yeah, that was very weird. Okay. When Vice President Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, swore in three new Democrats, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff of Georgia, and Alex Padilla, who was appointed to fill Harris' seat from California. Congratulations. Not long after, the Senate overwhelmingly confirmed President Biden's choice for Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines.

On this vote, the yeas are 84, the nays are 10. The nomination is confirmed. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Aastha Chaturvedi, with help from Eric Krupke. It was edited by Lisa Tobin and Paige Cowett, and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.