Joe Biden. Please solve all these crises

WASHINGTON — When Joe Biden took office as vice president in 2009, he was part of an administration inheriting the worst economic crisis in generations.

His second stint in the White House begins Wednesday under even more dire circumstances.

Welcome to the presidency, Joe Biden. Please solve all these crises.
When he takes office Wednesday Biden will face challenges that range from health and economic crises to deep political divisions and a reckoning over racial inequality.

First and foremost he faces the coronavirus pandemic, a health and economic disaster that is now killing around 4,000 Americans per day — worse than a daily 9/11 — has left some 11 million without jobs and millions more facing lost income, isolation, and an uncertain future.

He will be inaugurated in the shadow of a Capitol that two weeks earlier saw one of the ugliest moments in U.S. history: an insurrection aiming to overturn a democratic election. A Confederate flag was paraded through the Capitol that day, crystallizing the depths of the country’s festering divisions and racial animus. Uniformed soldiers and barbed wire now ring the Capitol.

Even as he pledges national healing, Biden will have to govern as the polarization and misinformation that drove that tragedy still run rampant, and with the cloud of a Senate impeachment trial that could extend President Donald Trump’s dominance of the national discussion.

And he’ll try it all with only the narrowest Democratic control of Congress.

“There are more challenges and they are more substantial than what even Barack Obama and Joe Biden faced when they came in,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), a staunch Biden ally.

He has presented himself as a figure of competence, stability, and empathy for a nation that has endured a chaotic four years and much suffering over the last nine months — and any sense of normalcy still seeming far off. For many, Biden’s campaign message wasn’t the most exciting, but presidential historian Timothy Naftali said it may be exactly what’s needed.

“A good-paying job and good health will excite Americans,” said Naftali, a professor at New York University. “We might have had enough political excitement for a while. In fact, I’m sure of it.”