First, exhale. Then pray for Biden. He’s going to need it.

January 22, 2021

By Ruth Marcus,

Tony Fauci seemed giddy — understandably so. Appearing in the White House briefing room for his Biden administration debut, Fauci spoke of the “liberating feeling” of being able to speak scientific truth without fear of presidential consequences.

So many of us feel the same, giddy with relief, liberated from four years of cringing at Donald Trump’s behavior and his policies. We have been waiting to exhale. Now we can, if just for a bit.

Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency with the country on the verge of civil war. But no president in history has inherited the array of challenges facing President Biden: a raging pandemic made so much worse by Trump’s malevolent mismanagement; an economy reeling from the consequences of the disease; a country riven by racial tensions; the threat of insurrection; and the reality that a significant subset of the country, inflamed by disinformation, does not consider him the legitimately elected president.

All to be handled even as Biden juggles conflicting pressures within his own party and governs with the slimmest of congressional majorities — so slim the evenly divided Senate cannot even agree on how to organize itself. And, oh yes, at least for a few weeks of his infant presidency, he must proceed amid the second impeachment trial of his predecessor.

First, though, the exhale. Trump wreaked incalculable damage, but he is gone — not just out of office but banished as a logical consequence of his behavior to the Internet equivalent of Elba. Even before his term ended, Trump’s silenced megaphone was a calming development, his absence from Twitter like the hush of an overnight snowfall. His all-caps voice will be heard again, no doubt, but never with such jarring force. Republican lawmakers do not have to set their alerts — and adjust their morals — to his missives.

Sanity, experience and decency have been returned to the Oval Office. Biden was not a perfect candidate, and he will not be a perfect president. But you don’t have to be someone who, like me, is in broad agreement with his policy priorities to recognize and welcome the reality that he will not be a danger or embarrassment to the country. This is a low bar, but it is the one Trump set for us.

Biden, in some ways, became president before even taking the oath. Since the awful afternoon of Jan. 6, he has effectively inhabited the office, leading the country while the incumbent raged over his loss. While Trump was holed up in the White House, silent as the insurrection he incited unfolded, Biden stepped forward to proclaim that “our democracy is under assault,” asserting that the riot “borders on sedition, and it must end now.”

And while Trump, until his final moments in office, dealt with the pandemic by blaming the “China virus” and applauding himself for the rapid development of vaccines, Biden assumed the mantle of consoler in chief for the friends and families of the 400,000 Americans who died on Trump’s watch.

I have watched Biden for more than three decades, as senator, vice president and presidential candidate, and this is the best Biden I have seen. Winning the office he has sought nearly his entire adult life becomes him. He looks and acts older, yes, and sometimes in an unsettling way. But he is also more self-assured than the vice president who worked in Barack Obama’s shadow or the young senator who seemed so hungry for approval from his older colleagues.

In an odd way, the insurrection provided moral high ground for Biden’s inaugural address. “And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed,” Biden said. His words reminded us, as few presidents entering office have felt the need to do, that this was no eternal certainty.

Which brings us to the steep and potholed road Biden faces. The sweep of his first few days in office underscores the immensity of the job ahead. There is much Trump-inflicted damage to repair: hence the executive actions returning the United States to the Paris climate agreement, rejoining the World Health Organization, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, lifting the travel ban and protecting “dreamers.”

But the pandemic and the economy are the top, intertwined priorities. Can the new administration deliver enough vaccine fast enough to outrun the spread of the mutating virus? It is infuriating that it is forced to do now what should have been accomplished months ago, but that is where we are. The path to passing another relief package on the (nearly $2 trillion) scale that Biden has proposed may be even more difficult.

So exhale. Revel in the fact that Trump is gone. But also: Pray for our new president. He is going to need it.

Read more: Henry Olsen: Biden’s stimulus plan suggests he fundamentally misunderstands this recession Alyssa Rosenberg: Biden wants unity and justice. Watching ‘Promising Young Woman’ could help. Leana S. Wen: Biden’s covid-19 strategy should be applauded. Here’s where it can go further. The Post’s View: Biden is looking for bipartisan unity. Foreign policy would be a good place to start. Eugene Robinson: The Biden administration’s biggest challenges are its best opportunities

Source: WP