Out with the old

TODAY is Donald Trump’s last day in office. Or, put another way, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s first. Either way, there is cause to celebrate.

The inauguration of a US president is normally a sombre affair featuring Bibles and solemn oaths, as well as soaring singers and even poets. Today’s proceedings may well strike such familiar notes. None of it will obscure the fact that this is an inauguration like no other.

There will be no debate about whether Mr Biden drew the biggest crowd in inauguration history. Officials hope it will be the smallest: Washington, DC, has been under wartime security in the wake of the deadly breach of Capitol Hill mere days ago.

As with previous ceremonies, members of the US congress, the supreme court and former presidents are expected to attend. However, Mr Trump has given all indications that he will not be coming to the party.

Inauguration acrimony is not unprecedented in American history, but Mr Trump’s unwillingness to co-operate with transition officials, his refusal to concede loss, his hostility to the peaceful transfer of power, his open courting of extremist insurrection – all of it is uncharted territory.

Expect the unexpected. What Mr Trump will do in his last few hours – pardons, orders, further incitements – all will become clear by the end of the day.

It is not all doom and gloom, however. Ms Harris, the first woman, the first vice president of African American and South Asian American descent, is to be sworn in. She follows in the footsteps of prominent Caribbean diaspora Americans such as Eric Holder, Colin Powell and Shirley Chisholm.

“Winning this election was not the end of our work,” Ms Harris said yesterday in a social media message. “In many important ways it was just the beginning.”

Also unprecedented: the great expectations that now rest on her shoulders and those of Mr Biden amid a pandemic that has killed 400,000 Americans and has plunged the US economy to levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The new administration hopes to hit the ground running with an ambitious plan to deliver 100 million covid19 vaccine jabs in its first 100 days. Whether it will be able to meet targets depends on how quickly it can fill key positions which, up to this week, remained vacant.

Mr Biden’s incoming treasury secretary Janet Yellen, the first woman in that post, has called for US lawmakers to “act big” in devising a stimulus package. The need for healing is not limited to healthcare and the economy.

After so much bitter division, Mr Biden, famed for his ability during his many years in the Senate to work across the aisle, now faces the biggest challenge of his life: how to heal the soul of a nation.