President Joseph Robinette Biden gave a fine inaugural address Wednesday.
Instead of celebrating American might, as new presidents so often do in inaugural speeches, or attacking the political establishment, as they sometimes do, he talked about what ails us — divisiveness and demonization.
And instead of an overgrown State of the Union address in which he would outline policy and legislative goals, he talked about the one great goal: Unity.
There are two kinds of unity in politics: One is a unity of immediate goals, one that involves policy and legislation. But the second kind of unity is unity on the grand scale — unity as to the preservation of the American republic. In this Mr. Biden rightly echoed Lincoln. First, we must preserve the union. This is our great common cause.
We cannot fight the pandemic, or global warming, or unemployment — things we ought to be able to find middle ground and common cause on — if we cannot agree on what it means to be fellow Americans and we cannot give each other the respect this fellowship implies.
America is not in a martial civil war right now, but it is in a cultural and political civil war. Dealing with that is the preface to fighting the common enemy (as if it were armed and from abroad) of a highly infectious disease.
Again, Mr. Biden echoed Lincoln. He said his “whole soul” is in it — it being the cause of the republic itself, its health and, ultimately, its life.
For Mr. Biden, as for Lincoln, politics is soul craft — devotion to the norms of civil association and to the mystic bonds of citizenship. And those bonds have been frayed by ideology, from left and right. We could argue about whether in equal measure, but that would be futile.
The point now is to stop arguing and focus on what we have in common and what we can do together. The civic and political fabric is so torn that, if the nation were transported back to 1942, we would be unable to fight a war on even one front.
Yes, it would be well if we could start to see and hear each other, as the president said. But the unity that matters most is of a practical nature. We don’t have to like each other in order to want to save the country — together.
COVID-19 has taken as many lives as World War II. We have the highest rate of the disease in the world. We had better stop name calling and get it together, starting today.
Is this possible? Is Mr. Biden the man to lead us in this cause? Do people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi see that our civil war has gotten out of hand?
Well they should. They must.
As to Mr. Biden: He is old and frail but decent, experienced and compassionate. He is halfway to the goal by virtue of his willingness to try.
As to the rest of us: Can we dial it down? Can we see the trouble we are in? Can we put democracy and the country ahead of party and spleen? As Robert Kennedy once asked: Why not?
— Tribune News Service
