WASHINGTON – One theme ran throughout Joe Biden’s inaugural address in January 2021: “unity.”
Biden uttered the word nearly a dozen times, signaling that his main ambition would be to overcome partisan divisions so deeply rooted that his predecessor, Donald Trump, broke with tradition and didn’t bother to show up at the Capitol for the inauguration.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural against urban, conservative against liberal,” Biden said.
Four years later, the war still rages on. As Biden faces re-election, the nation is trapped in the same relentless tribal gridlock that has worsened in America for generations.
He is not giving up, allies said, and if he wins a second term he may seek to appoint Republicans to Cabinet positions and redouble efforts to make American political discourse less toxic. But this is not done so easily.
A Vanderbilt University study measuring national unity shows a steady decline since the early 1980s, with an uptick after Biden’s inauguration only because the number of people who “strongly disapprove” of the president declined a bit after Trump’s departure, said John Greer, the Vanderbilt political science professor who created the index.
In a focus group last week, a 46-year-old Georgia Republican said the reason she switched from Trump to Biden in 2020 was the hope that Biden’s victory could give way to more national cohesion. Disillusioned by what she saw, she now plans to return to Trump.
“I started with the thought that the world wouldn’t be so divided,” she said in the focus group, led by Engaging/Sago as part of your Swing Voter Project. “Things would get better; people would be nice. And we’re back in the same boat again. Only worse, to be honest.
For years, Democratic officials have predicted that the far-right movement that dominates Republican politics will die out — that the “fever” will subside when a series of electoral defeats forces a reckoning within the Republican Party.
“I think the fever is going to break,” Biden, then vice president, told a reporter aboard Air Force Two in 2012, after Barack Obama was reelected.
“You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends,” Biden said in 2019 during a presidential campaign appearance in New Hampshire.
This never happened. There was no epiphany, no civic awakening. Trump was removed from office in 2020, but the man and his MAGA movement are poised to regain power. Trump is running around right there with Biden in national polls.
His acolytes hold leadership positions in Congress and are among its most prominent members. One of them, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, called for a “national divorce” last year, with the nation divided into red and blue states.
Far from triggering a national rapprochement, a defeat for Trump could trigger a round of political violence to rival that of January 6, as his embittered supporters mount protests against a result that neither he nor they accept as valid, officials warn current and past.
Trump himself does not rule out the possibility of violence by his supporters if he loses in November.
“I think we’re going to win,” he said last month. “And if we don’t win, you know, that depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Tom Daschle, former Democratic leader in the South Dakota Senate, compared the national climate to a “metastasizing political cancer.”
“I’m worried about what will happen if Trump loses and whether or not we will have a repeat of what happened on January 6th,” he said.
One difference, of course, is that Trump will not be in the White House in the weeks following this election. Regardless of the outcome, Biden will still be empowered – and obligated – to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” until January 20.
Biden has not given up on the notion that the parties can reach some kind of détente. He also hasn’t abandoned the idea that victory in November could lead Republicans to renounce Trumpism, people familiar with the matter said.
They point to significant legislative victories during Biden’s term as proof that cross-party agreements are possible even in the current climate, when important national interests are at stake. Most recently, he signed a law sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine so it can defend itself from a Russian invasion that threatens the post-World War II order.
If Biden wins in November, he will be in a better position to ease polarization, his allies say. He could play a distinctive historic role if he could bring about a thaw in partisan animosities without having to worry about a backlash from his liberal base. Biden, a product of a more collaborative era in Washington, wants to reach consensus, which makes him a good fit for this difficult moment, said some who have worked with him.
“President Biden is uniquely qualified to find ways to work together to get things done,” said a senior White House official. “Everything about his presidential leadership fits into that kind of effort.”
Allies hope that Biden, in a new term, will appoint Republicans to more prominent positions in his administration, which Obama tried to do. He retained Robert Gates, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, as his secretary of defense and later appointed former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to the same position. Ray LaHood, a respected Republican representative from Illinois, was Obama’s first transportation secretary. But Biden saved great Cabinet jobs for loyal Democrats.
“I think if Joe Biden is reelected, there’s a good possibility that there could be a Republican in his Cabinet,” Ted Kaufman, a longtime Biden confidant and former Democratic senator from Delaware, said in an interview.
The White House did not respond to a request for official comment.
Blaming Biden for the lingering hostility between the parties may be too simplistic, officials argued. He took office two weeks after the Capitol riot that disrupted the peaceful transfer of power. To this day, Trump insists that the 2020 election was stolen, implying that Biden does not legitimately hold the office.
It’s hard to find a willing partner if the other side believes, without proof, that you’re a fraud — or confused. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., mocked Biden’s age last year during a difficult series of budget negotiations, offering to bring “soft food” to the White House for lunch.
“When Donald Trump continues to run for president and divide the country, it is very difficult for the president, despite all his efforts, to achieve that goal” of national unity, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. “It’s not that defeating Donald Trump will result in harmony across the country. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think that by defeating Donald Trump in this election, we will remove some of the poison from the national discussion.”
Still, Biden may have missed some ripe opportunities to calm tensions and project a more bipartisan image, others said. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois is a Republican who has repudiated Trump, serving on the Congressional panel that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He is the kind of independent-minded Republican whose exile in the Trump era has made bipartisan collaboration in Washington will be more difficult.
Kinzinger credits Biden for “doing more than I expected and more than people give him credit for” in promoting bipartisanship. He said that in January, a Biden campaign official called him and suggested they would use him in the campaign once Trump rival Nikki Haley dropped out of the race. But Haley ended his campaign more than two months ago and, he said, has yet to hear from the Biden world.
“There is 20% of Republican voters who are still voting for Nikki Haley” in the GOP primary race, Kinzinger said. “These are approachable people!
“I don’t say that because I need an ego boost. I say this because what the hell are they [the Biden campaign] doing?”
For different reasons, Republicans of various political stripes believe Biden should have pumped the brakes and blocked efforts to hold Trump accountable for alleged crimes.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle last week that Biden could have helped himself — and hurt Trump politically — by issuing a pardon on federal charges and supporting New York prosecutors to drop his hush money case against Trump.
“You may disagree with this, but if I were President Biden, when the Justice Department brought the charges, I would have pardoned him immediately,” Romney said. “Why? Well, because that makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I forgave, a little boy.”
McCarthy said Biden had a reservoir of goodwill on Capitol Hill from his time as vice president, when he often played the role of Obama’s negotiator. That began to ease even before Biden took office, McCarthy said in an interview.
“I think he started and missed an opportunity. I think when he was elected, he saw the Democrats going to impeach Trump again,” said McCarthy, who at one point sharply criticized Trump’s behavior on January 6. and said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.'”
On politics, McCarthy, who right-wing forces within the Republican caucus removed as president last year, said Biden has given in to pressure from a left-wing faction within the Democratic Party that gives him little room to strike deals with Republicans.
Noting Biden’s aggressive efforts to eliminate federal student loan debt, McCarthy said, “Would he be forgiving student loans over and over again if he didn’t have such a hard time with the young people in his party?”
When a country is so deeply divided, there can be a limit to what a president can do alone. A Pew Research Center One study found that halfway through Biden’s 2022 term, the percentages of Republicans and Democrats who consider themselves “immoral” have soared since 2016.
However, there are some constructive steps that Biden and the nation can consider, officials and political scientists said. Daschle suggested that, if reelected, Biden should invite congressional leaders from both parties to Camp David, Maryland, over the December holidays to see if they can forge a joint agenda — and then reveal it during the State of the State address. of the Union in the New Year.
Others said deeper structural changes are needed in the way the nation governs itself. Pippa Norris, a comparative political scientist at Harvard University, proposes a system of expanded representation in Congress designed to ensure that the smallest and most marginal parties have at least a voice.
Germany and New Zealand use this approach, which could ease the frustration of voters who feel angry and disenfranchised by America’s two-party, winner-take-all tradition, she said.
As president, Trump devoted little energy to reunifying the country. Biden, if he receives another term, will at least try, his allies say.
“I know what kind of person Biden is,” said Hagel, who served with Biden in both the Senate and the Obama administration. “And in your own mind, that [defusing partisan tensions] it could be his greatest contribution to this country when he leaves office.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
