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Joe Biden's presidency starts on a challenging note

The controversy-free, scaled-down inaugural ceremony of the 46th president of the United States may have offered the impression that normal service was being resumed in the world’s sole superpower. Coming just two weeks after the 45th president attempted a coup, this would be a misleading notion. The benign aspect of the brave new America was on display in the swearing in of the country’s first black/South Asian woman vice-president, Kamala Harris, and from the multicultural performances at the ceremony. And Joseph Biden sought to underline the return to normalcy by insisting on holding the ceremony outdoors, as is customary, despite security threats. But his impassioned 22-minute speech highlighted unmistakably the trials America faces in the years ahead. “Democracy has prevailed,” he exulted in a not so oblique reference to the unsuccessful storming of the Capitol on January 6 as Congress convened to confirm Mr Biden’s election. And though neither he nor anybody who took the podium mentioned Donald Trump by name, the 45th president, who broke tradition and skipped the ceremony, was very much the elephant in the Capitol.

Mr Biden addressed his predecessor’s divisive legacy bluntly. He spoke of the cry for racial justice and of confronting and defeating “political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism”. He also reasserted the key staples of the Democratic party’s platform — rejoining the Paris climate accord and a less malignant immigration policy. But he chose to present his agenda as part of the great American dream that is achievable only in a united country. In his repeated appeals for unity, however, Mr Biden set out the boundaries of disagreement — “That’s democracy. That’s America. The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our republic, is perhaps our nation’s greatest strength.” And he differentiated himself from Mr Trump’s cruelly indifferent handling of the Covid-19 crisis by holding a moment’s silence for the over 400,000 Americans who succumbed to the disease.

Spared the serial inaugural balls owing to the pandemic, Mr Biden got down to work swiftly, signing some 17 orders, many of which undid Mr Trump’s more egregious policies on immigration (with all its implications for H1B visas too), affordable care, the environment, employment, and the economy. But the reassuring optics of bipartisan bonhomie, with Democrats and Republicans exchanging hugs and handshakes and taking good-humoured digs at each other, should be not taken at face value. It is true that Mr Biden has a record of successful bipartisanship in his decades in the Senate. But Mr Trump enjoys considerable support among Congressional Republicans, evident during the January 6 confirmatory votes. Though the Democrats control both Houses of Congress, the lead in the House of Representatives is slender, and the Senate is evenly divided, with Ms Harris holding the deciding vote as Speaker. One of the first pieces of Senate business is Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial. That outcome will determine the extent of political polarisation under Mr Biden and holds important signals for global politics. In an inaugural speech mostly targeted at Americans, he spared some reassurances for allies in Europe and Asia. Mr Trump demonstrated that the US was an unreliable ally and he has done much to discredit the White House globally. From that new low, the task before Mr Biden, the oldest president to hold office, will be to make America great.