A New Hope with Biden and Harris

Competence and Compassion and Truth Are the Promises of the New Administration

By Nick Welsh | January 21, 2021

AFTER THE RAIN: For someone who spent the last four years looking for banana peels to dance on, Wednesday morning was a good moment to be alive. Joe Biden gave serious cause for serious hope. Not the carney blarney kind, but the real kind. Something from the heart. 

Admittedly, I’ve always been susceptible to Biden’s undeniably Irish-Catholic schtick about hope and redemption. But I figure anyone who can quote James Joyce, riff on St. Augustine, and praise the importance of truth, all within 24 hours, while not coming across like a nauseating fraud is someone who might be able to deliver the goods.

Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, got my attention the day before when I saw them speaking by the base of the Reflecting Pool leading to the Washington Monument. They were acknowledging the enormity of grief that the COVID pandemic had already caused and the oceans of tears that were yet to be shed. I was not moved so much by anything that they said as by the fact that they were so obviously moved. They were there.