Biden’s task of restoring unity is not merely a matter of being statesmanlike or breaking down the hyper-partisanship of recent years. It is a matter of restoring faith in democratic institutions, the media, and in facts as a basis for debate.
Joe Biden has never been one for fighting on all fronts at once. He’s more George McClellan than Sam Grant or William Sherman – often afraid that too great a display of courage might bring him into collision with the enemy. But he does not have all the time in the world. And everything he does as president needs to be not only essential in its own right but judged for long-term wisdom through the prism of whether it serves to help restore unity in a fractured nation – at times seemingly on the brink of civil war.
Restoring unity is not merely a matter of being statesmanlike rather than jeering at opponents after a solid victory. Nor is it about mere reconciliation, as though differences have not become fundamental. It is not simply about knocking heads together, or of breaking down some of the hyper-partisanship of recent years.
It is a matter of restoring faith in democratic institutions – including in the electoral system itself. It involves restoring faith in the media, including new media, and in generally agreed facts (as opposed to strongly held opinions or beliefs) as a basis of argument and debate.
Trump manipulated the sense of his being an outsider – one who didn’t care what the “elites” thought – by constantly talking of how politics at virtually every level had become corrupted by insiders, lobbyists and special favours. He was going to drain the swamp. That struck a chord with many dispossessed white Americans, but it’s a feeling (and a reality) that goes well beyond special Trump constituencies.
Hardly anyone could better represent the comfy and corrupted world of professional politicians, lobbyists, influence mongers and deals than Joe Biden himself. He’s been around forever – including in an era before politics became so polarised. He knows how the system works. He knows something about lubricating the machine of state.
Some of the deal-making has been corrupt. However, compromise is at the heart of the American constitutional system. Sometimes it brings politicians from both sides to work amicably in solving great national problems, rather than looking only at ways of making the other side look bad. A major vice of Trumpism has been how its effects were mostly for short-term political advantage, rather than any long-term good, even from the viewpoint of a Trump. He, and supporters such as Mitch McConnell, trashed a lot of institutions and conventions for fairly small gains – often succeeding only in making government more difficult, less based on public interest, and less trusting.
Over his long parliamentary career, the art of a Biden often consisted of trying to find ways to bring opponents on board by little concessions (to their districts or their prejudices) that could make them think they shared ownership of a project and that they too had had a win. Compromise, in the US system, is more about win-win than about grinding one’s enemy into the dust.
Biden would do well to think aloud, and address the electorate at large – which will include the alienated, the sullen and the suspicious – over the heads of the politicians.
The man may not be charismatic, but he is affable, and does not instinctively seek to polarise with every breath. He should be asking the best of Americans, not echoing their tribal hatreds, sneering or point-scoring or living in short-term grudges.
Trump became famous for twittering insults, anathemas and surly commentaries, along with an unshameable narcissism. But his tweets were by no means all spontaneous or from a stream of consciousness. Rather they were researched by his political staff – not just for their capacity to appeal to potential supporters but for their capacity to distract, infuriate and unsettle his political enemies. His enemies thought his weakness was his indiscipline, or that he could be trapped by disputing his “facts” or his logic but too often they were being played by an expert.
Bringing people together is possible, even though distrust is high. Many Americans are deeply sentimental, susceptible to reiterations of claims of American exceptionalism, greatness and nobility of purpose – statements that seem absurd, ludicrous and embarrassing to the rest of the world. Especially now, post-Trump.
The nation abounds in flag-worship and national rituals, not least at times of death, or tragedy or rededication to disinterested higher purposes. Whether one likes the excessive religiosity or not (or its preachers or not), religion is another way of inculcating higher purpose into a conversation between governor and governed. America’s best leaders have been good speechmakers, good at drawing all together for some common purpose (and in the process making themselves seem above the fray). The best too, use their “bully pulpit” to set the public agenda.
This seemed to be something that Trump simply could not do. He was a specialist at dividing Americans. Hardly ever did he – or many of his followers, including members of his family – espouse a noble aspiration or sentiment, or use some ideal as an explanation of what they were doing. He spoke the language of self-interest – often his own. Even when religion was invoked it was generally as a weapon to attack others – by the pretence that God was a registered Republican, and that the Republican agenda had been settled with the Bible on the table (alongside the gun). The mean spirit has been all too much underlined by the introduction of coded references to race, misogyny and latent violence.
Those most needing to be brought into the fold of mainstream America are in need of jobs, dignity and pathways to self-improvement rather than the dead-end of the minimum wage. But they and other alienated Americans must be addressed also in terms of their values and their identities rather more than being patronised by transactional promises or mere appeals to their economic self-interest.
It is not merely a reflection of the way the partisan spirit has atomised society and made people more tribal and inclined to believe that others are a clear and present threat to their way of life. Such folk have their own media reinforcing not only their sense of themselves, but, as Isabel Sawyer put it this week in The Atlantic, their sense of themselves as citizens.
She quotes political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lyn Vavreck as saying: “Growing divisions between the Republican and Democratic Parties threaten to make political conflict less about what government should do and more about what it means to be American … This is the American identity crisis and it is getting worse.”
“At the core of a unifying response will be an agenda to address the economic divide between Americans. It needs to be focused on the dignity of work, and call for greater investment in building skills, creating jobs and raising wages and benefits.
“I now believe that, in addition, the US may need to adopt a more explicit industrial policy alongside place-based strategies to revive small towns and rural communities. I also believe the cultural underpinnings of American divisions are more important than I earlier understood. To address them, the country will need more than an economic agenda: it will need new efforts to re-establish respect for the facts and to cultivate respect for one another across political and social tribes.”
And just as important, she says, is the establishment of schemes to rebuild a sense of community and shared purpose at the local level. Enhancing inter-group contact (prejudice and distrust are reduced when groups know and deal with each other) and to create shared work towards common goals, building bridges instead of walls, thereby limiting tribalism and social division.
That’s a big agenda for an old codger still curious about whether Trump has booby-trapped the White House, poisoned the water supply, or encouraged harassment by gun-totin’ “patriots”. It won’t be sweetness and light, and, after all, the mid-term elections are now only 22 months away. Biden’s biggest consolation is that there are plenty of people wanting the nightmare to be over and for him to succeed.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
Comments
24 responses to “With a booby-trapped White House, many Americans will want the nightmare to end”
The news from the US today is about a novice Republican congresswoman who made a public TV appearance declaring that she will push for impeachment procedures against Biden one day after Trump’s. The sad division in the US continues to fracture and will take up most of Biden’s presidential time for domestic affairs and less on international affairs. Maybe it is a good idea to follow wisdom – charity begins at home.
I already have my stash of popcorn ready. Can’t wait for them to all start shooting each other!
The much-aspired-to Unity will never be achieved without the destruction of the 2020 Democrats and their terrorist stormtrooper thugs: BLM & ANTIFA. What we have seen is a replay by the Dems + ANTIFA + BLM of the 1933 Burning of the Reichstag plus the 1938 Kristallnacht.
It was also mightily similar to the Bolshevik 1917 storming of both the Duma and the Winter Palace in St Petersburg by another socialist predecessor to the Nazis.
The Nazi horror lasted only 13 years, but the Bolshevik horror lasted for 70 years.
Now another radical socialist Party – the Democrats want to inflict another reign of terror on conservative, White Judaeo-Christian America by identical means.
The media is already being purged with the shutdown of Parler, if the ultimate horror of Biden (read Kamala) is sworn in on the 20th of this month, expect the American FEMA camps to be turned into Concentration Camps for the Godly, White, pro-Israel Christians in exactly the same manner as the Bolskeviks commandeered the monasteries and turned them into Soviet Concentration Camps.
I hope and trust that all civilised readers of this site will read, mark and inwardly learn from world history since 1900. And reject the Biden/Kamala Democrat Communists as a force for evil in America. If they do not, welcome to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Amerika.
What a load of fake news codswallop. Where did you come up that sort of level of wild conspiracy theory?
Not a skerrick of evidence either, just fear promulgating McCarthyist-like propaganda and spurious nonsensical claims.
You are missing Mary’s point, George, and there is a positive opportunity here. The censorship of POTUS by Big Tech should be enough to shock both sides of Congress into finally supporting legislation promoted by Senator Elizabeth Warren to break up big business monopolies or oligopolies. This is known as anti-trust law and is associated with Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. It is a good test of Senator Warren’s integrity. I hope we hear from her soon. She has nothing to lose. I repeat my advice to all to watch the Bret Weinstein/Jeremy Lee Quinn interview. If I had been in Washington I would have walked into the Capitol with the protesters. The Capitol belongs to the people It is their House. This story has a long way to run.
Come on, she has turned Schwarzenegger’s Kristallnacht video talk into the opposite where the left are blamed – he’s even a republican. It is exactly what Fox news did yesterday as well as what Trump tried to do, blame ANTIFA rather than the many of ultra right wing white supremacists who actually got inside the building.
The rest is just wild raving typical of conspiracy theorists of joining dots to suit the conspiracy. It’s like QAnon where the paedophile conspiracy is replaced with a communist conspiracy.
No George. I insist. You are shooting the messenger. I would not have missed the Capitol march for quids. It was a Boston Tea Party moment. For reporter Jeremy Lee Quinn, who is on the Left, it was a flash of light on the road to Damascus. Firstly, it was not about race. Even from the cherry-picked footage we can see the crowd came in all shapes and sizes, colours and racial backgrounds. There was no mention of race and he did not see a gun but what he did find was lots of common ground with the Black Lives Matter and Antifa crowds among whom he mixed at earlier marches. They agreed on the big issues — prison reform, for example. Above all, the crowd in the Capitol kept saying this is our place. Damn right it is. It belongs to the people, not the political machines. I was so glad to hear Mary’s voice among the platitudes of comfortably retired civil servants giving us their condescending views on the Donald.
You are trying to gaslight me.
Jimmy Dore uses that word all the time. I will have to look it up. Mary is new to me but the issue here is censorship. Shutting down the Hunter Biden story to save his Dad’s political skin was banana republic corruption. As Mary notes with Parler, the nerds and turds of Silicon Valley are now closing off Trump’s media. When a few pigs more equal than others can take us off the airways they don’t need to pen us up in concentration camps. I gather from your comment that the Kindergarten Cop has invoked Kristallnacht, thereby taking hyperbole to new heights. I want to encourage Mary. She is a lot more interesting than Richard Butler and John McCarthy.
The trouble with America is that it talks a lot about ‘freedom’ but at the same time it has no idea what it is. It mistakes freedom with the selfish individual pseudo-right to do or say anything you like without thinking about the consequences on anyone else.
That is not how freedom is ever attained for the maximum amount of people. It is won by some for of constraint. Just as by having some laws about driving on the road helps the majority of road users stay safe. That’s why we introduced those laws. It’s also why we have laws against murder, so the majority can go about their lives without fearing being murdered by some psychopath.
It is likewise with ‘freedom of speech’ which the right wing politicians and media pull out at every opportunity when it suits them. Yet what is observable is that these very same groups exhibit a narrow bundle of ideologically-based fascist thoughts that seek to destroy everyone else’s right to free speech.
You are not fooling me Jerry, you are Trump’s man and if you think Mary makes sense it is a worry. Her mind is living in a neo-medieval world. While she claims to be Christian, she like many others reflects nothing of the teaching of the purported Jesus – only hate.
But I thank you in indirectly pointing out how seriously crazy things have become, and how much the kind of thinking you show support for is behind the opinions of many in our Australian federal government.
If you are not worried about Parler, George, you should be. See if you can find Glenn Greenwald’s account of the Parler story. I am about to read it. I am my own man and I would have voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020 and for Jill Stein in 2016 and 2012 but it is true — in Trump versus Biden I am with Trump and the Deplorables. I don’t think Mary’s mixed-up Old Testament stuff does any harm. I too looked up her archive and I was surprised I had not come across her previously. I have not looked into it yet but I am disturbed by the politically correct attack on Craig Kelly, now that you mention the Australian parliament.
Jerry, I just read a number of MaryJoy333 post on disqus. I’m am shocked. It is measure of just how lost the thinking is in belief-based conspiracy theories in the US.
You are definitely gaslighting me. Do you agree with the things she writes? If you do then I can see where you are coming from too.
I am still trying to work out whether MaryJoy333 is a neo-fascist fundamentalist Evangelical who is more pro-Israel than Israel itself or a neo-fascist pro-ethnic cleansing Jewish fundamentalist who is deliriously enjoying the cruel persecution of Palestinians and the remorseless browbeating of the Arab world by the fascist state of Israel. Definitely fascist nonetheless!
This may help:
A few more of MaryJoy333 comments on disqus.
https://disqus.com/by/marytherese333/
Makes Pauline Hanson look like a saint. Religion inspired white supremacism galore.
Adolf would blush at what is being said by MaryJoy333. “Right of Genghis Khan” could be an apt metaphor… . [But could such a person actually exist?]
She’s got it all in one. White supremacism, yellow peril, ‘god’, blame the Palestinians, communism. She goes right back to Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1870s Germany.
Adolf would blush at what is being said by MaryJoy333. “Right of Genghis Khan” could be an apt metaphor… . [But could such a person actually exist?]
Here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Voelker_Europas.jpg
Sheesh! They had their swords drawn on what looks like the Buddha in his meditative peaceful lotus position! Kipling was right then: “Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”.
A very good analysis of Biden and America Jack.
Biden has also had to accept the direction Sanders was taking with the Democrats, and so shift his views to accommodate a growing part of America that also perceives the rot everywhere, and they are a younger and better educated cohort. They want significant change at many levels. Much of what Trump was doing was perceived by them as destroying their futures.
In any case Trump’s appeal to disaffected voters was fake, a trap that exploited them even further, and many of his followers still do not see it. Faith not reason prevails. In this country Howard did it with his ” Howard’s battlers” and by absorbing Pauline Hanson’s racist agendas, and Abbott did it with his “Tony’s tradies”.
One thing that does provide evidence that Biden is a capable leader so far is that he actually won the election. This replete with a female, dark-skinned vice president, and radically different and opposite policies compared Trump. So many people thought no one could beat Trump, or that Trump was such a crooked player he would find a way to turn a loss in to a victory using any means possible. He didn’t, even in trying to trigger a coup through what clearly appeared as sedition. For his followers it was not necessarily a spontaneous act – some were well prepared – “stand back and stand by” being announced many weeks earlier to the Proud Boys.
While I know the Biden of the past, he seems to have won the election and Senate out of using relatively few words, a strong contrast to Trump, and so the words he chose hit the mark and countered Trump’s views and abusive behaviour with success. Maybe he has acquired something with age.
It’ s no joke looking at the actual state of America he is inheriting however, and only time will tell how many genuine Trump supporters will continue to cause public unrest or even carry out some home grown terrorism. The general media has aimed its focus and increased its magnification on the small group that actually entered the Capitol building. Some reports say ‘thousands’stormed the the building – a complete exaggeration, far less actually went inside. I suspect that those who did these acts are a much smaller percentage of Trump supporters, and some clearly used the opportunity for their own specific agendas beyond Trump’s narcissistic need for self-preservation..
It is interesting to note that the book on the “faith” of Donald Trump features a foreword by the now thoroughly disgraced Eric Metaxas who recently convened the grotesque Jericho March in Washington.
Some time ago our own John Anderson who was the former deputy Prime Minister featured a long very sympathetic interview with Metaxas. John’s most recent interview with John Lennox is a real doozy
There is a very informative profile on Metaxas featured on the Encyclopedia of American Loons
Given the recent history of the US, it could be said “if Trump did not exist they would have to invent him”. https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/if-donald-trump-did-not-exist-would-it-have-been-necessary-to-invent-him
Mr Waterford, you have provided an as nuanced an understanding of the US and its people as any analyst could. Thank you for providing many insights.
I have visited the US twice in recent years. Both times, I developed positive views of its people and the beauty of the country. However, that has never mitigated my view of the ugly politics, locally as well as internationally, of its government. I can understand that those who love the US are alarmed by the division among its people do not wish to see further divisions. However, that underlying rule that unity is precious has never been applied by the US in its dealings with countries that it considers unfriendly, or politically different, or even culturally disdainful.
I say this because the US has never hesitated to interfere in other countries’ internal conflicts. Only this morning, we see on the news a call of the US government to overturn the Trump governments decision to label the Houthis in Yemen as “international terrorists”. What do Houthis mean to the Americans? What do pictures of starving Houthi children (pictures of skin over a skeletal frame with huge eyes) mean to the Americans? We see the Trump government acquiescence to Israel’s further annexation of Palestinian territory and its decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. This started soon after WWII when the US interfered with the civil war between Maos communists and Chiang’s nationalists. When Chiang lost and fled to Taiwan, they protected him and caused a division of the country into Peoples Republic of China and the Republic of China. Now it threatens war if China dares to take Taiwan back by force of arms and armed Taiwan to the teeth in the process. They followed this up with interference of the politics in the Korean Peninsula, resulting in the division of the country into two. Vietnam followed. This time the Vietnamese “won” and soon turned capitalists like the Chinese. Now, they can’t wait to see (Nancy Pelosi’s “What a beautiful sight” to the HK violent protests) Hong Kong break away from the PRC.
Even if internal conflicts in third world countries were allowed to play themselves out without foreign interference, I doubt if the suffering they have to endure would be as serious as one prolonged or aggravated by foreign interference. In the Yemen case, as I understand it, it is just a conflict between Sunni’s and Shiites. Arms are sold at a huge profit to the Saudis that caused all that misery. Is that the attitude of a nation with a huge population of conservative Christians?
One wouldn’t be so critical of the US if one understands the history of the Civil War in the US. When the Civil War started in 1862, Abraham Lincoln knew that it would be difficult to win the war against the Confederates if the Europeans like Great Britain and France who badly need cotton from the South to feed their textile factories (textile manufacturing was their main industry at the time). They sent ambassadors to Europe to lobby frenetically for these major powers to abstain. For this I support my argument with a quote from a book called “Rise to Greatness – Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year ” by David von Drehle (2012). In it, he says:
“At that point, Britain and France could supply the naval and industrial muscle the Confederates so desperately lacked. When that happened, the project of conquering the South – a project that was already staggering – would become impossible; the north would have to give up.”
There is indeed a role for a powerful and wealthy nation to keep the peace in the world, but only as an arbiter of disputes in support of a real “rules base” world order. Would the US consider that role for itself?
Very well said Teow Loon Ti, and masterful on the history.
I also agree about Jack’s article, he is still one most accurate and reliable journalists in this country with a great depth of knowledge.