President John F. Kennedy urged Americans to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. When he takes the same oath of office next month, Joe Biden will effectively beseech the nation to do exactly the same thing, if in more prosaic terms, with an appeal for every American to wear a mask for his first, symbolic 100 days in office .
The President-elect revealed the galvanizing, altruistic, first national rallying call of his administration in an exclusive CNN interview on Thursday with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, previewing a sharp change of direction when he succeeds President Donald Trump.
"Just 100 days to mask, not forever. One hundred days. And I think we'll see a significant reduction," Biden told CNN's Jake Tapper, implicitly acknowledging that the coronavirus could be raging at even more intense levels when he takes office than its current alarming spike.
Ever since President Franklin Roosevelt took office in the dark days of the Great Depression in 1933, the first 100 days have marked the apex of a new US leader's power and often the most prolific period for policy wins.
During the interview Thursday, Biden referenced the steep challenges Roosevelt confronted when he was first elected, noting that the current circumstances are "not unlike what happened in 1932."
"There was a fundamental change, not only taking place here in the United States, but around the world," Biden told Tapper. "We're in the middle of this fourth industrial revolution," he noted. With all the changes in technology, he said, Americans are wondering, "Will there be a middle class? What will people be doing? ... There's genuine, genuine anxiety."
FDR told Americans in his first inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself," steeling a demoralized citizenry to hold firm amid a banking crisis that threatened to destroy an already devastated economy.
Biden will take office amid the most extreme domestic circumstances of any president since Roosevelt, with sickness and death rampant and millions of unemployed Americans, hungry or at risk of losing their homes.
Like his Democratic forbear, he will use the iconic opening moments of his term to summon an exhausted people to unite, in common cause - with the help of new vaccines - this time to beat the virus and save the economy.
There is a question, however, whether Biden's calls for national unity will resonate among people who didn't vote for him after Trump's relentless attacks on the legitimacy of his victory in the presidential election. But Biden's call to action may carry greater urgency now that the virus is taking hold in rural areas of the heartland with comparatively rudimentary health care systems, which escaped the first wave of infection that concentrated in many cities that tend to vote for Democrats.
Biden's interview - his first since the election that also included Harris - underscored a complete course correction from Trump's attitude towards the virus. The pandemic has never been worse than it is now in the United States. One American is dying every 30 seconds amid record fatality figures and hospitalizations. Doctors and nurses are exhausted after months inside overflowing under-resourced Covid wards.
More than 276,000 people have now died from coronavirus in the United States and the nation set a new record for hospitalizations on Thursday with more than 100,667 people being treated for Covid-19.
Yet the current President is ignoring the carnage, as he pursues his fantastical lies and claims the election that he lost by a comfortable margin was stolen.
Trump has frequently mocked the wearing of masks. He is holding holiday parties inside the White House in defiance of his own government's health recommendations. When he returned home after his bout in military hospital with Covid-19 he famously turned to the cameras and ripped off his mask.
By contrast, and if past behavior is any guide, it is conceivable that one of Biden's first acts after delivering his inaugural address in 47 days will be to put his mask back on.