Editorial: An Inauguration Day wish for strength, statesmanship from new president

On any other presidential Inauguration Day, we could invoke the feeling that, virtually by definition, always marks this day - hope.

But the 25,000 National Guard and other troops swarming over every important site in Washington, D.C., provide an eerie affirmation that other moods also accompany the start of the Joseph R. Biden era.

President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017, with our best wishes for - among other hopes - wisdom, patience, strength, courage and "the desire to pursue peace and prosperity for all." Four years later, we can offer no less to President Biden as well.

We must acknowledge those troops, however, and the special challenge they represent. Today, they are a manifestation of divisions even greater than those that marked this day in 2016. Tomorrow, with luck and skillful execution of their duties, the peace keepers will depart, but the Capitol they leave behind will remain the epicenter of a seismic question that has convulsed our nation from its start: How much government should a free nation sustain? The challenge of every American president, indeed of every American Congress, is to address that question in a way that satisfies a nation whose hundreds of millions of residents all answer it differently.

It is clear today that Joe Biden takes the helm of a country nursing much dissatisfaction, and while he takes the oath with 81 million votes behind him - the largest total ever achieved by a presidential candidate -, he also takes it with more than 74 million votes challenging him - it, too, a larger sum than any presidential candidate previously produced.

So, the charge that confronts Biden today is not just to bask in the cheers of those 81 million who sided with him, but to encourage the participation of those 74 million who did not. It is not just to chart a new way forward for the nation, but to solicit the engagement of nearly half the country in supporting and advancing a vision that includes all of us.

In his victory speech and countless addresses since, Biden has made it clear that he understands the duty that lurks behind every policy initiative he promotes - whether it be the pandemic, immigration reform, foreign affairs, health care or the economy and taxation. He frames that responsibility in terms of "healing," and that is unquestionably appropriate imagery. But it is not merely healing that Joe Biden must foster; it is also strength. It is not merely telling 74 million Americans that they have the president's ear, it is also demonstrating to them that they have a valued place in the country we all love.

The National Guard troops, let's be clear, are not on hand to protect against the millions who preferred a president other than Biden. They are there because of the minority factions within that group that have demonstrated a clear and present danger to the health of our government. Neutralizing those factions is the immediate demand of the moment; nurturing an environment that does not encourage or sustain them must closely follow.

For, ultimately, America's future cannot be secured through a succession of tectonic political shifts from right to left to right and back again. The task ahead for Joe Biden today - and for the next four years - is not just advancing a vision for the role of government in our lives, it is also producing stability, so that collectively we can find a shared vision. To meet that task, we offer additional wishes on the day of his inauguration.

We wish him energy. We wish him the fortitude to resist the winds of political convenience. We wish him the tenacity to harness the gales of societal need. We offer him, perhaps above all, the same wish we had for Donald Trump four years ago - "the power to dream of great things and the statesmanship to make them come true."

And we wish for ourselves, as we also wished in 2016, to be "our best selves" so that regardless of which camp we identify with - whether those behind Biden or those who sought a different outcome - we will overlay our hopes and apprehensions with faith and continue to build a nation that works for all.