WASHINGTON – His fellow Democrats are furious after the Capitol attack, but President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has maintained a studied coolness and largely stayed away from the scorching debate that culminated on Wednesday with the impeachment and retention of President Trump His focus was on fighting a deadly pandemic, revitalizing a stalled economy, and lowering the political temperature.
Hours after the House of Representatives voted to indict Mr. Trump a second time, Mr. Biden condemned a so-called violent attack on the Capitol and the “public servants in this citadel of freedom”. He said a bipartisan group of lawmakers condemned the violence by following “the constitution and its conscience”.
But he also pledged to see Americans “stand together as a nation” when he becomes president next week, and showed the deliberate approach to politics that became the hallmark of his march into the White House.
“This nation also remains in the grip of a deadly virus and a volatile economy,” he said in a statement. “I hope the Senate leadership will find a way to deal with their constitutional impeachment responsibilities while working on the nation’s other pressing issues.”
Instead of stepping up his party’s efforts to hold Mr Trump accountable, Mr Biden has postponed spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in the House and Senate. Over the past week, he has refined policy proposals and introduced new candidates, while delivering a carefully calibrated message above the struggle. “Congress decides that you decide,” he said two days after the impeachment attacks.
Mr. Biden’s emphasis on the impending government challenge is based on the belief that the nation is in a devastating crisis and that his priority must be keeping Americans healthy and restoring the prosperity that has ensued in the midst of an increasingly devastating pandemic has evaporated. But it also highlights the contrast between his cautious, centrist attitude towards politics and the simmering anger of many elected democratic officials and voters over Trump’s attacks on democratic norms and their desire to punish him for them.
The president-elect has made it clear that after Trump’s four turbulent years in office, he wants to work to resolve the rift in America’s political culture.
“Too many of our fellow Americans have suffered too long in the past year to delay this urgent work,” he said in the statement. “I have said many times that if we do it together, there is nothing we cannot do. And it has never been more important for us to stand together as a nation as it is now. “
At the same time, in a sharply divided Congress, he will pursue a democratic agenda and force him to do a balancing act that will certainly be particularly precarious in the opening weeks of his administration, as the Senate will again litigate Mr. Trump’s behavior and weigh his condemnation.
“I think he looks calm,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist who helped shape Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and has become an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump. “Part of that whole moment is getting back to normal. Having a level-headed president who doesn’t tweet angrily and try to win every news cycle – that’s a trademark of Biden. You were very patient. “
As a candidate, Mr Biden pursued a strategy that deliberately kept him above the battle and refused to be drawn into the chaotic vortex of Mr Trump’s presidency at every turn.
But what helped him win the Democratic nomination and the White House could weaken when he is sworn in at the Capitol next Wednesday, amid exceptional security, the potential for further political turmoil, and pent-up demand from his own party legislative victories.
After his tenure, Mr Biden will likely find it next to impossible to keep matters such as impeachment at bay, especially given the spectacle of a Senate process dominating reporting and slowing his urge to gain approval for his candidates. Robert Gibbs, who served as President Barack Obama’s first press secretary, recalled how the White House struggled in the early days of administration in 2009 to maintain the messaging discipline of its campaign.
The Biden transition
Updated
Jan. 14, 2021, 10:58 ET
“In a minute you can decide what to comment,” said Mr. Gibbs. “In the next minute, not only can you not make up your mind, you are also responsible for everything.”
The risk to Mr. Biden is that a determined effort to continue to focus on returning to normal will be seen as disconnected from a moment that doesn’t feel normal at all.
On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi called Mr. Trump on the floor of the House “a clear and present threat to the country,” and a handful of Republicans warned of “a serious threat” from the seated president insisting “we can’t wait a moment longer” . remove him from office.
In contrast, the week since Mr Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr Biden has introduced members of his cabinet, called for a minimum wage increase, pledged to support small businesses and vowed action against the pandemic. Yet while making his disdain clear and reiterating his belief that the current president was unable to take office – and ripped Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for their role in promoting unsubstantiated claims of widespread electoral fraud – Mr Biden avoided the questions Mr Trump should be charged and convicted.
Even as lawmakers were debating whether to become the first president to face two indictments, Mr Biden’s transition team on Wednesday sent out summaries of meetings involving some of his cabinet candidates, including a “listening session” on environmental justice issues and a “Virtual Round Table” on education for people with disabilities.
People close to the president-elect say Mr. Biden was appalled by the scene at the Capitol. But he’s caught between competing priorities: holding Mr. Trump accountable for inciting violence against residents of a building he worked in for decades and quickly moving his agenda through a Congress that is already deeply divided.
Mr Biden’s candidacy was at the center of the actions that led to Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial. Mr Trump tried to pressurize Ukraine to undercut Mr Biden through a series of events related to the work of Mr Biden’s son Hunter in that country.
When the Democrats announced their intention to indict Mr Trump for the first time in late September 2019, Mr Biden was slow to embrace a trial that many of his fellow Democrats considered long overdue. Just two weeks after Ms. Pelosi started legal proceedings against Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden specifically approved them.
This approach was in part a campaign strategy specifically designed to counter Mr. Trump’s ubiquitous tactics. But it was also a reflection of Mr. Biden’s temperament and broader political instincts.
Mr. Biden was a Senate creature for more than 30 years, many of them at a time of relative bipartisan fellowship on Capitol Hill. He was a deal maker who took pride in working with Republicans, respecting Senate traditions, and was less inclined than many of his peers to surf party passions. In fact, as a young senator in 1974, Mr. Biden was concerned about the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.
“I don’t know what’s on his head, but I suspect he’d have mixed feelings about his body over the past few decades,” said House Democrat James E. Clyburn of the ongoing impeachment whip and a close adviser to Mr Biden . “He’s an institutionalist.”
Mr Clyburn said the president-elect did not want to be distracted from the challenges the country would face once he succeeded Mr Trump in the Oval Office.
“He would love to go ahead to get the country going again and I agree,” said Mr Clyburn, who voted on Wednesday to indict Mr Trump. He said Mr. Biden understood how “egregious” Mr. Trump’s behavior was and “sought a level of comfort” that balanced the president’s punishment with the flipping of the Trump era.
Obama, too, faced difficult decisions when he took office in 2009 about how much time and energy to devote to grappling with the recent past and holding officials in the George W. Bush administration accountable.
In April of that year, Obama approved the publication of memos from the Bush White House approving the use of torture against terrorist suspects. In a long and Solomonic statement, however, Obama called for “reflection rather than retaliation” on an issue on which some Democrats called for war crimes to be prosecuted.
However, the likelihood of Washington being consumed by a Senate trial in the early days of Mr Biden’s administration will make the tension between his predecessor’s accountability and focus on the nation’s other pressing challenges particularly acute.
“As the Senate is consumed by the first,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political advisor in 2009, “he may fear that it will be more difficult to implement his own deadlines and agenda.”
