Congratulations, President Biden. Now come to Pierce County, a familiar spot for you
Dear President Biden:
First let me say how refreshing it is to finally put those two words together. No more “president elect” or “Democratic nominee” or “vice president.” You are POTUS No. 46, the freely and fairly elected chief executive of the United States, despite your predecessor’s contemptible claims to the contrary. And you are our president in Pierce County, Washington, as well.
As a matter of fact, on behalf of the 253 area code, I encourage you to pay a visit.
“You’ll Like Tacoma,” the classic message from a promotional sign at the Alaska-Yukon Pacific Exposition, is as true today as it was in 1909. But you should know this already, having visited here three times as the dutiful Veep stand-in for Barack Obama.
The words you shared in Wednesday’s inauguration address were uplifting. My ears perked up when you called for national unity and vowed that “my whole soul is in this.” But the hard reality is that you spoke in a locked-down Capitol Mall surrounded by thousands of National Guard troops in a transfer of power that can only loosely be described as peaceful. You preached to a nation poised on knife’s edge between hope and anger, trust and paranoia, unity and alienation.
Pierce County represents that divide as much as many places in America.
Nearly 54 percent of voters here supported you on Election Day, much stronger than the 48 percent that Hillary Clinton turned out in 2016. But nearly 198,000 local voters chose Donald Trump, and many remain skeptical that you’ll be a good president for them.
A trip to Pierce County — the beating heart of the real Washington, 2,700 miles west of your fancy new residence — would let you make your case in one of the most beautiful settings in the country.
Heck, you’d score big brownie points simply by showing up. Far too much time has passed since a president set foot here. Trump and Obama both skipped the South Sound on their rare visits to the Evergreen State, opting for the larger fundraising center and media market up north. George W. Bush dropped in, but only for an unannounced visit to salute war-weary troops at JBLM.
Gone are the days when Tacoma routinely appeared on presidential itineraries. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding all filled the Stadium Bowl, while Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon drew crowds to the University of Puget Sound Fieldhouse.
Ronald Reagan was well on his way to reelection in 1984 when he dropped anchor at the Port of Tacoma, meeting with dockworkers and business leaders at the Weyerhaeuser log-export facility.
What few visits we get are usually tied to election campaigns. That includes the time you packed Cheney Stadium in October 2008, stumping for Obama-Biden 1.0 and supporting the reelection bid of Gov. Chris Gregoire. In a 40-minute speech, you referred to the historic visit President Kennedy made to the same stadium in 1963, just weeks before his assassination.
But your most important visit to Pierce County wasn’t about hustling votes. While much of your Veep calendar was surely a blur, you’ll probably never forget attending a memorial service for seven soldiers killed by a buried bomb in Afghanistan in 2009. “They were heroes. They were warriors,” you told mourners at JBLM. “They knew the risk, yet day after day they’d saddle up and go out into No Man’s Land and do the job.”
As president your advisers will tell you to delegate such appearances to your own vice president — and of course, we’d welcome Kamala Harris to Pierce County, too. But I hope you’ll take us up on the invitation to reprise your own visits here.
You could salute some of our country’s finest troops stationed at the West Coast’s largest military base.
You could meet with other warriors — the heroic healthcare professionals on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic — who work for two Tacoma-based hospital systems.
You could visit our Port and see a major gateway to the Pacific Rim, a cornerstone of the ailing US economy you hope will rebound under your watch.
And you could see a community that’s a microcosm of America’s racial reckoning, as we struggle to fulfill the promise you laid out Wednesday: that “the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.” Pierce County is coming to terms with its ignoble past — the Chinese expulsion of 1885, the Japanese-American purge of 1942, the police killing of Manuel Ellis in 2020 — even as we chart a more equitable future.
You could drive across the Fishing Wars Memorial Bridge, in honor of Puyallup Tribe activists, and the Harold G. Moss Bridge, named for Tacoma’s legendary civil-rights leader and first Black mayor.
And by all means, you should take in the unsurpassed majesty of our 14,411-foot sleeping giant — officially called Mount Rainier, but more appropriately known as Tahoma. We don’t expect you to bag the summit, like Al Gore did in 1999. A day trip to Paradise will do just fine.
Pierce County beckons, Mr. President, with America’s chronic frailties and towering potential on full display. We hope to see you here soon.
Reach News Tribune editorial page editor Matt Misterek at matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com
This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 2:00 PM.