TIME

Recovery Act

AS THE SHADOWS LENGTHENED, FRANKLIN Roosevelt’s mind returned to the beginning. At his fourth Inaugural, held on Saturday, Jan. 20, 1945—the President had less than three months to live—FDR recalled the words of his old prep school headmaster, Endicott Peabody, who often remarked, “Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights—then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.” Or so FDR and generations of Americans have hoped.

One of those forward-looking Americans is now the President-elect of the United States. The task awaiting Joe Biden in Washington is immense; arguably, he faces the

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