Presidential inaugurations are usually festive occasions in which Americans celebrate the orderly and peaceful transfer of power to new political leaders. With the coronavirus pandemic raging and thousands of troops on guard to deter violence by deranged followers of Donald Trump, that’s not exactly the mood in Washington today.
Overshadowed by these grotesque legacies of Trump’s presidency, the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is a somber affair. Nonetheless, it’s a day of deliverance, and fresh hope, for America.
We are delivered from a pathological liar and demagogue who likely will go down in history as the most deformed character ever to occupy the White House. Our democracy has survived, though by an unnervingly narrow margin.
There will be much talk in the days ahead of healing, as there should be. President Biden wisely resists pressure from within his own party to govern in the same corrosive, zero-sum way that Trump and his Republican enablers have. The last thing America needs is for Democrats to join Republicans in fanning the flames of civil strife.
But before there can be reconciliation, there must be truth and accountability.
On Nov. 3, 2020, the American people fired President Trump. Psychologically unable to accept the peoples’ verdict, Trump concocted a myth of massive voter fraud and spent the next two months urging Republican election officials to falsify the election results. His seditious scheming culminated on Jan. 6, when a mob of supporters invaded the Capitol and threatened lawmakers certifying the 2020 vote. Five people died in the Trump riot.
For this unprecedented assault on U.S. democracy from within, the House rightly impeached Trump for a second time. To drive home the gravity of his crime and uphold the authority of our Constitution, the Senate should swiftly convict him.
This is simple justice, not vengeance. It is a vital act of democratic self-preservation.
And it’s crucial because if we are delivered today from Trump, we are not yet delivered from Trumpism. Americans should never forget his cowardly and disloyal accomplices, especially the eight Senate Republicans and 146 House Republicans who voted to reject the states’ certification of the electoral college vote.
Most worrisome are the millions of Trump voters who apparently have swallowed his lies, not to mention the fanatics who subscribe to crackpot theories propagated by QAnon and alt-right sites that peddle hatred and call for armed insurrection. To counteract the online radicalization of the right, Congress should empanel a 9/11-style commission to study the election and its aftermath and report to the public what really happened.
Ultimately, however, Republican leaders are going to have to rededicate themselves to dealing with facts, evidence and objective reality and purge their own ranks of extremists. We’ve never been fans of GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, but his honesty about the Jan. 6 insurrection is a start. “The mob was fed by lies,” he told the Senate. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
Finally, we’re grateful today to President Biden and Vice President Harris for making a convincing case to the American people for denying Trump a second term. We’re confident that they will restore experience, reason, honesty and decency to the White House after a ruinous four-year detour into delusional populism.
And we’re hopeful that the ambitious agenda our new president has outlined – at once progressive and pragmatic – will make our democratic government work again. That’s the best recipe for bringing Americans together.
