Biden and governor unite in call for less political bitterness

PRESIDENT Joe Biden and Utah governor Spencer Cox disagree on many issues but they were united in calling for less bitterness in politics and more bipartisanship.

“Politics has gotten too personally bitter,” said Mr Biden, who has practised politics since he was elected to the US Senate in 1972. “It’s just not like it was.”

The Democratic president commented while delivering a toast to the nation’s governors and their spouses at a black-tie White House dinner in their honour.

Mr Biden said what makes him “feel good” about hosting the governors is “we have a tradition of doing things together.

“We fight like hell, we make sure that we get our points across. At the end of the day, we know who we work for. The objective is to get things done.”

Mr Cox, a Republican and chairman of the National Governors Association, preceded Mr Biden to the lectern beneath an imposing portrait of Abraham Lincoln above the fireplace in the State Dining Room.

The Utah governor said the association “harkens back to another time, another era, when we did work together across partisan lines, when there was no political danger in appearing with someone from the other side of the aisle and we have to keep this, we have to maintain this, we cannot lose this”, he said.

Mr Cox leads an initiative called Disagree Better that aims to reduce divisiveness.

He had joked earlier in the programme that he and Mr Biden might be committing “mutually assured destruction” by appearing together at the White House since they are both up for re-election this year.

He told Mr Biden that as state chief executives, governors “know just a very little bit of the incredible burden that weighs on your shoulders.

“We can’t imagine what it must be like, the decisions that you have to make, but we feel a small modicum of that pressure and so, tonight, we honour you.”

Mr Biden said he remembered when lawmakers would argue by day and break bread together at night.

He is currently embroiled in stalemates with the Republicancontrolled House over immigration policy, government funding and aid for Ukraine and Israel.

Mr Cox went on to say that his parents taught him to pray for the leaderofthecountry.