Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on Wednesday. We know there are a vast number of people in this country, even in our readership, who do not consider him to have earned the honor, but he won in what courts, state legislatures and Congress have declared to be a free and fair election. So even if you don’t consider Biden to be “your” president, the fact remains that he is “the” president. How we deal with this fact will determine what happens to this country in the future.

We hope bipartisanship will be rediscovered in the halls of Congress. Democrats hold an exceedingly slim margin in the House and the barest of all possible edges in the Senate. There won’t be much possibility of anyone steamrolling the opposition on any issue. Legislators will be forced to listen to each other if they want to get anything at all done.

We hope that respect between the White House and Capitol Hill will return. We hope Democrats and Republicans will view each other as the opposition instead of enemies, and that Biden will use his long history of making friends in Washington to good use.

Much needs to be done, from ramping up the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, to getting more stimulus aid to those affected by the disease.

One major piece of old business remains. The Senate will have to take up the latest impeachment of former President Donald Trump and try him on the charge of inciting insurrection that the House brought last week. All of the divisiveness of the past four years will be brought to bear on task. It will tear more at the deep divisions across the country.

We can only hope that once that is completed, whatever the outcome may be, that our nation can start trying to heal.