Joe Biden’s theme is unity. He wants a country that is less divided and rancorous and he’s pledged to return to normalcy. His first few days in office were refreshingly boring. An ABC/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows that Americans believe he can bring the country together and have faith that he can handle the pandemic better than Trump.
On social media, Republicans are blasting Biden for ignoring his pledge because he’s introducing legislation and signing executive orders that conservatives don’t like. Members of the Trump administration complain that they are being fired from their politically-appointed positions. But the unity we need is not about policy or staffing. It’s about shared values and traditions, especially the ones Trump attacked.
Biden has made a point of publicly reaching across the aisle. He invited Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy to attend church with him on the morning of the inauguration. He attended Mass yesterday and, afterward, stopped at a locally-owned deli for lunch. In contrast, Trump rarely attended church and almost never visited Washington businesses that didn’t have the name TRUMP on the building.
The administration has reinstituted daily press briefings and the official twitter account is not full of rantings, insults, or directions posted in the middle of the night. The flow of information, so far, is neither chaotic nor inflammatory. The stream of lies that flowed from the Trump administration has stopped. Hiring seems to focus more on experience and expertise than on loyalty to the president.
The executive orders that Biden has signed appear to have broad support. People want the government to lead on the pandemic response and more than 80% approve of his mask mandate for people in federal buildings and on federal land. His executive orders around civil rights and LGBT protections also receive high marks. Overall, his beginning is getting good reviews from most of the country.
Biden has so far shown respect for his political adversaries and for the institutions of the Senate and House, refusing to interfere publicly in divisive matters like the impeachment. He’s emphasized his faith, publicly attending church several times and invited his political foes to join him. While his relationship with the press will inevitably be rocky, his press secretary heralded the necessity of the fourth estate as opposed to calling them the enemy of the people.
Biden’s unity revolves around respect for institutions, not bipartisanship. One of those institutions is the rule of law. Impeaching Trump and holding elected officials accountable for inciting, encouraging, or assisting the insurrection is accountability, not division. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to downplay the assault on the Capitol, claiming “everybody across this country” bears some responsibility. That’s not unifying the country. That’s denying justice, one of the values that Biden believes is unifying.
The unity Biden is offering is not all-inclusive. He believes that America can come together around the shared values and respect for the institutions on which the country is founded, regardless of how imperfectly they have been used and applied. Those values include a respect for the rule of law, religious freedom, justice, equality, and democracy. The institutions include Congress, the courts, the presidency, and a free press. Those who support white supremacy, authoritarianism, and insurrection will be excluded by a country that recognizes and ostracizes them. Unity includes rejecting anti-democratic and discriminatory principles and the people who espouse them.
In calling for unity, Biden is not requesting Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals set aside their differences. He’s asking them to reject extremism and understand that heated disputes around policies can still take place without rejecting the patriotism or humanity of their political foes. He’s asking the country to come together around the hope of the founding fathers to create a more perfect union in an inherently unjust world. It’s a tall order and idealistic, possibly unrealistic, one, but it’s worth a try.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Unity is not the word we need to be using. Not least because it’s impossible, but also because it’s not what’s needed here.
Unity is a church potluck where everybody brought instant mashed potatoes.
Unity is a choir made up entirely of baritones and second sopranos.
Unity is an alarming paucity of ideas, innovation, initiative or imagination.
Unity assumes that one size fits all and offers no alternative to that model.
And Unity is never going to happen. Not in the world we live in, and not in the world as it ever was. Because we are all different. Different in how we look, how we feel, how we work, how we play, how we love and how we pray.
And the world is better for it when we sing not in unison, but in harmony.
Harmony lets us bring fried chicken and homemade hummus to the potluck.
Harmony creates those soaring anthems that raise the hair on our arms, the spirit in our hearts.
Harmony brings ideas to the table, and challenges us to each bring our best, so that the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts.
Harmony fits us each uniquely, and makes us better for the experience.
In my business, it’s impossible to know all there is to know. We rely on each other to bring a contribution into the solution, and when that happens, we don’t just come away form it with a better solution collectively, we all individually come away from it knowing something we didn’t when we started.
(And if the above turns up in a speech by Jeff Jackson, it’s because I sent it to him last night.)