Biden’s classy call for an ‘America united’

Yet the challenges are immense: the worst pandemic in a century, the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and breathtaking internal divisions. Only three percent of Americans said in a recent poll that things are going “very well” in the United States these days.

Just as striking, 81 percent of Republicans said the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, while 78 percent of Democrats said the Republican Party has been taken over by racists, according to an October PRRI poll.

More Republicans said white people face a lot of discrimination (57 percent) than they said Black people do (52 percent), and 85 percent of Republicans said they saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride.

Perhaps Biden’s own experience with trauma can help all of us heal. He has said that he contemplated suicide after the death of his first wife and his daughter in a car accident, and he has publicly supported his son Hunter’s recovery from addiction – while helping so many other people over the decades overcome their own tragedies. Now he has been summoned to help America recover.

“My whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our people,” he said on Wednesday. Skeptics have suggested that Biden is naïve in supposing that he can work with Republicans and bring the country together, and he acknowledged as much.

“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days,” he said, but he added that enough Americans have always come through to carry our nation through crises – “and we can do that now.”

I think he and his aides also believe that even if he fails as a bridge builder, the outreach can woo doubters and prove his bona fides.

During the inauguration, friends were giddily emailing me from all over the world. “You have today a great day,” said a Pole. And from a Spaniard: “I believe the US has, more than any country in the world, the capacity to change for the better!” I think and hope that they’re right. Drew Faust, a historian and former president of Harvard University, said she has been asked many times in the last four years whether America has ever been so divided. In the past her answer was no, we weren’t yet waging war against each other – but now, after the Capitol insurrection, she’s rethinking.

“I think we’re approaching the kinds of fissures we saw in the years that led up to the Civil War,” she emailed me. “We also face circumstances that our predecessors did not. Social media provides a structural incentive to stoke division. Clicks reward conflict, not accuracy or truth.”

Yet she said she’s optimistic. “I am hopeful,” she said. “Hopeful that the last two weeks may have clarified what is at stake. Hopeful that the new administration may be able to find some common ground. Hopeful that people of goodwill may be able to recognize the risks we have flirted with and forge a different path.”

That, as Biden suggested, places a responsibility not just on him or on leading politicians but on all of us. He was blunt about the threat of “lies told for power and for profit,” after Sean Hannity on Fox News suggested that Democrats want to put Trump supporters in “re-education camps” and Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business claimed that Democrats put on MAGA gear to infiltrate the Capitol for the insurrection. But Biden added a gracious note appealing to our better angels, and I take it to heart and hope you do, too.

“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” he urged. “We can do this – if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”

We’ve moved from “a time to kill” to “a time to heal.” And maybe someday we as a nation will be able to dance again.