A unity agenda for Joe Biden

UNITY WILL NOT BE SO EASY TO ACHIEVE, GIVEN THE READINESS OF SO MANY TO IMPUTE THE WORST POSSIBLE MOTIVES TO OTHERS. — FR. RAYMOND DE SOUZA

The new president of the United States will be a “president for all the people,” who will now “come together” in unity after a “divisive” campaign. So said Joe Biden last week. So said Donald Trump four years ago. I suspect Thomas Jefferson said it back in 1800.

Last week I wrote about how “Sleepy Joe” — to use Trump's distasteful deprecatory designation of his opponent — was likely attractive to many Americans who wish to turn down the volume on national politics and take a long winter nap.

Readers inclined to think that every newspaper column ought to be encyclopedic in its breadth and depth of analysis were kind enough to get in touch, professing outrage that I had become an enthusiast for partial-birth abortion, which the Democratic party — and Biden and Kamala Harris — favours with disturbing intensity.

Unity will not be so easy to achieve, given the readiness of so many to impute the worst possible motives to others, and to construe all events in the worst possible way.

Last week I wrote about the shift that Biden will bring in style and temperament, but it is more critical that he pursue an agenda of unity. Rhetorical calls for unity while pursuing a radical agenda are really invitations for the other side to roll over and abandon their positions. That will not go well.

Herewith, then, are four policy areas where a Biden administration might forge some political unity with voters who opted for Trump. Much of it amounts to not poking a finger in the eye of those culturally conservative Americans about whom Biden rhapsodizes so often when he speaks of his roots in Scranton, Pa.

First, abortion. Biden is typical of the Democrats of his generation — Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neill, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Al Gore — who were opposed to expanding the abortion license in the 1970s but shifted dramatically toward the abortion extremism that now characterizes their party. In contrast, Trump's genuine action to moderate the abortion license earned him the votes of many pro-lifers despite reservations about the rest of his agenda.

Until last year, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment, a statutory prohibition on federal funding of abortions. It was a historic compromise position that's lasted for decades. Yet he abandoned it because Democratic primary voters were in no mood to compromise. His administration will rollback Trump's pro-life executive orders, but he should return to the Hyde Amendment position he held for 40 years. Compelling taxpayers to support abortions is a deliberate provocation that will divide, not unite. Second, religious liberty. One of the oddest choices of the Obama administration was the zeal with which it restricted the religious liberty of those who dissented from its cultural liberalism. While Obamacare exempted tens of millions of employees of massive corporations from its various coverage mandates, President Barack Obama and Vice-President Biden would not permit the Little Sisters of the Poor to opt out of providing contraception in its plans, even though there were easily workable options for the employees to get it elsewhere.

The Big Government harassment of religious sisters who care for the indigent elderly shifted from federal to (Democratic) state governments after Trump came to power. Biden can decide to turn the federal screws on the Little Sisters again, or let them alone. It would be a magnanimous gesture that would cost him precious little.

Third, China. Biden is part of the multi-generation, bipartisan soft-on-China consensus, the greatest exemplar of which was President George H.W. Bush, who renewed China's “most favoured nation” trading status less than a year after the butchery in Tiananmen Square.

Trump challenged that establishment consensus even before China's lethal duplicity over the coronavirus. The

THE NARROWER THE VICTORY, THOUGH, THE BIGGER THE CHALLENGE.

pandemic killed off the prestige of that establishment consensus. Biden ought not make any effort to revive it. Instead, he should embrace the fact that Trump changed the debate on China, and not change it back.

Fourth, crime, policing, law and order. This year's protests over the killing of George Floyd brought criminal justice issues to the forefront. Biden used to boast about drafting the crime bills that established as public policy the mass incarceration of Black men. He doesn't any more.

Trump, contrary to expectations, advanced the first criminal justice reform in decades that reduced incarceration by expanding clemency. It was one reason for his improved standing with Black voters. Biden can set aside the inchoate and impractical calls to “defund” the police, and instead work on practical measures — which have been supported by Trump himself — to reduce the injustices of mass incarceration, which are disproportionately suffered by African-Americans.

The winning candidate earns the right to pursue his agenda. The narrower the victory, though, the bigger the challenge. Narrow victories emphasize the need to broaden the coalition. Biden can begin to do just that — with actions, not words alone.