“I will be the fi rst, but I will not be the last,” Harris
told TIME. “And that’s about legacy, that’s about cre-
ating a pathway, that’s about leaving the door more
open than it was when you walked in.”TIME FROM ITS BEGINNINGS has had a special con-
nection to the presidency, as a refl ection of America
and its role in the world. Every elected President since
FDR has at some point during his term been a Person
of the Year, nearly a dozen of those in a presidential
election year. This is the fi rst time we have included
a Vice President. In a year that saw an epic struggle
for racial justice, and one of the most consequential
elections in history, the Biden- Harris partnership
sends a powerful message. “The tell of this election,”
says Harris, is that regardless of “your race, your eth-
nicity, the language your grandmother speaks, let’s
move forward knowing that the vast majority of
us have more in common than what separates us.”
The task before the new Administration is
immense : a pandemic to confront, an economy to fi x,
a climate crisis to tackle, alliances to rebuild, deep
skepticism to overcome with many Americans dubi-
ous about unity with Trump voters, and an opposi-
tion party still very much under Trump’s sway. How
to begin to reach out to, much less lead, the Ameri-
cans who profess to believe that Donald Trump won
the election? I asked Biden. His answer was, more or
less, Trust me and trust the American people. “You’re
going to see an awful lot of Republicans in the House
and the Senate willing to... work with me,” Biden
says. “I think that’s what I’ve done my whole career.”
This will be the test of the next four years:
Americans who haven’t been this divided in more
than a century elected two leaders who have bet their
success on fi nding common ground. The odds may be
long. But it will be among the most critical chapters
in the arduous quest for a more perfect union.
For changing the American story, for showing that
the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of
division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving
world, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are TIME’s 2020
Person of the Year. □BIDEN CALLS HIMSELF
Devastating fi res across the West Coast showed how
unprepared we are for climate change. Confl icts
over voting tallies and the science of wearing masks
showed how divided we are even on basic facts.
Joe Biden was elected President of the United
States in the midst of an existential debate over what
reality we inhabit. Perhaps the only thing Americans
agree on right now is that the future of the country
is at stake, even as they fi ercely disagree about why.
Dismissed as out of touch on the left and misrepre-
sented as a socialist from his right, Biden stood his
ground near the center and managed to thrive even
as the social, digital and racial landscape around him
shifted. With more than 51%, Biden won a higher
percentage of the popular vote than any challenger
to a presidential incumbent since Franklin Roosevelt
in 1932. “What I got most criticized for was I said we
had to unite America,” he told me in a conversation
(masks off , 16 ft. apart) at his unoffi cial transition
hub in Wilmington, Del., on Dec. 7. “I never came off
that message in the primary or in the general elec-
tion.” Whether America can be, or even wants to be,
united is a question he will soon have to face.
It is noteworthy that a year after selecting climate
activist Greta Thunberg, the youngest person ever
named Person of the Year, we move to one of the old-
est in the 78-year-old President-elect. Biden calls
himself a bridge to a new generation of leaders, a role
he embraced in choosing Kamala Harris, 56, the fi rst
woman on a winning presidential ticket, daughter of
a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. If Donald
Trump was a force for disruption and division over
the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the
nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experi-
ences and worldviews that must fi nd a way forward
together if the American experiment is to survive.