The National - News

Trump was elected because of deep divisions Biden may be unable to heal

- GAVIN ESLER Gavin Esler is a broadcaste­r and UK columnist for The National

The smallest denominati­on of US currency, the one cent coin, doesn’t buy much, but it does provide a glimpse of how Americans like to see themselves. Every coin carries the Latin phrase “E Pluribus Unum”, which translates as “out of many [people], one [nation]”. It’s a tribute to the unity in diversity of Americans and their migrant history.

But the phrase is not a statement of fact about unity. It’s an ambition. And this ambition historical­ly has often not been achieved because America – like now – has always had to contend with its deep and sometimes violent divisions.

In the 1770s, the British colonists were split between those who remained pro-British and the rebels who created the United States. In the following century, slavery led to the country almost falling apart. President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was gracious in victory as he crushed the Confederac­y in the Civil War.

He promised in his second inaugural address in 1865 a renewed union with magnanimou­s words carved on the walls of Washington’s Lincoln Memorial: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Now, more than a century and a half later, the Democrat needs once more to bind up the nation’s wounds. As his defeated opponent Donald Trump sulks, Joe Biden called for an end to “the anger and demonisati­on” in politics saying that “the vast majority of the 150 million Americans who voted – they want to get the vitriol out of our politics”. Mr Biden spoke of a new coming together: “The purpose of our politics isn’t to wage total and unrelentin­g war. It’s to solve problems. We may be opponents but we’re not enemies. We’re Americans.”

Yet healing did not work for Lincoln. He was assassinat­ed by a Confederat­e diehard. Mr Biden’s declaratio­n of coming together will not be easy to put into practice. It may not be possible. There are 70 million Trump voters, some of them irreconcil­able, some armed and a few potentiall­y dangerous.

The culture-war wounds of post-Trump America are deep. Trumpism as a phenomenon will outlast Mr Trump himself, since it is based not just on the votes of those 70 million but on decades of genuine grievance as well as bitterness and bigotry. Mr Trump did not cause America’s deep divisions, but he was elected as a result of them.

He has repeatedly exploited the fault lines in a society divided over wealth, privilege, opportunit­y, culture, race, and even the meaning of America itself. Even in the greatest struggle of the 20th century, the Second World War, the US was so divided between those two visions – the beacon and the fortress – that president Franklin Roosevelt could not lead his country into war. It took the attack on Pearl Harbour by Japan in December 1941 to bomb the US out of isolation and into defeating fascism.

Faced with the clear enemy of Soviet communism in the 1950s America was split again. The McCarthyit­e witch-hunt ruined lives. In the 60s and 70s, racism, civil rights and the Vietnam War exposed again the fault lines in American society.

By the 90s, with the collapse of the communist threat, America was left as the world’s only superpower but turned inward again to its own quarrels. From the moment Bill Clinton was elected, he and his wife Hillary were hate figures for the far right. Republican­s in Congress conspired to destroy the Clintons, spending years investigat­ing their supposed shady property deals in Arkansas, the so-called “Whitewater Affair”. Whitewater yielded nothing, so they switched to Mr Clinton’s sex life. Mr Clinton became only the second president in American history to be impeached. Twenty years later, Democrats got their revenge by impeaching Mr Trump.

Both presidents survived the process, but the country remained deeply split. The US, in other words, is always diverse but also divided. For Mr Biden, healing is Job One, but healing now is made more difficult by Mr Trump’s childish refusal to accept defeat, compounded by baseless claims that the election has been “stolen”. The Senate, like the country, is divided down the middle. Rural America and urban America often seem like different nations. Race remains America’s original sin.

There are, however, reasons for optimism.

First, Mr Biden can afford to be dull. Rather than the political performanc­e art of Mr Trump, Mr Biden can be steady. He will re-engage with Nato, the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organisati­on, and restore a calm America that can truly lead on the world stage. As vice-president, Kamala Harris, a woman of Jamaican and Indian descent, is a living, breathing, human example of “E Pluribus Unum”.

Bipartisan action on the coronaviru­s pandemic and foreign policy will be good for every American. And if a nation as vast as the US can be said to have a “mood”, there is a sense of exhaustion about America’s divisions. Many Republican­s, privately, will be pleased the Trump tantrums no longer define their party. Congressio­nal elections are every two years and voters will not forgive Republican­s who offer more division.

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde once quipped that “the youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilisati­on goes they are in their second”.

Beneath the sarcasm, Wilde has a point. America has coped with divisions for several hundred years. No other country – France? China? India? Russia? – captures the imaginatio­n of the world the way America does. Mr Biden will not bind up all America’s wounds. But he will try.

Being able to change profoundly is also one of America’s oldest and best traditions. And so is hope.

There are 70 million Trump voters, some of them irreconcil­able, some armed and a few potentiall­y dangerous

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