Biden should have focused on bipartisanship
Think for a minute about some of the most trying moments in the last century of our country’s history. The Kennedy assassination. The Challenger disaster. The Oklahoma City bombing. 9/11. The thread that tied these events together was the nationwide response: No matter whether the danger was foreign or domestic, the country’s leaders responded by bringing Americans together in common cause. In a nation that has always been riven by cultural, regional, racial and other divisions, we have almost always bridged those chasms in moments of crisis.
But not on Jan. 6. That crisis is now being used to deepen the divisions between left and right. Let me be clear: the riot at the Capitol ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration posed a very real threat. In addition, the failure of too many in the GOP to fully condemn the riot or unambiguously acknowledge Biden’s victory deepens the national wound. The president promised to bring the nation together and that challenge is formidable. This month, when he addressed the nation from Statuary Hall in Washington on the first anniversary, he chose not to heal the nation’s wounds but to attack his predecessor and advance the Democratic Party’s voting rights agenda in the process. It’s for those reasons that I believe we need to acknowledge a sad truth: If Jan. 6, 2021, was a catastrophe, Jan. 6, 2022, was an embarrassment.
In a not too distant American past, the first anniversary of Jan. 6 would have been marked by former presidents, the current president and current leaders from both parties standing arm-in-arm to pledge “never again” and to chart a path back toward unity. That would have sent a clear message that America would not be shaken by the violent behavior of extremists bent on disrupting the core workings of our democracy. But that’s almost entirely the antithesis of what happened — and that’s really what’s so worrisome about this moment. Both parties squandered a prime opportunity to bring the country together.
Perhaps we never could have expected more of former President Donald Trump, who has made no secret about his support for the rioters and his ongoing grievances about the outcome of the 2020 election. But we should be able to expect more of today’s Republican leaders, and also from Biden who explicitly promised us all better. At his inauguration, Biden vowed to help unify the country. He had been elected to get the country past the divisiveness and vitriol that had defined the previous administration. And yet, given an opportunity to bring Democrats and Republicans together, he used the first anniversary to score points for his partisan agenda.
As Biden asserted from behind his podium: “Instead of looking at the election results from 2020 and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes, the former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections. It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. And frankly, it’s un-American.” That moment called for something very different, as did the president’s more recent speech on voting rights in Atlanta where, once again, he steered the country toward more intense vitriol.
It didn’t have to be this way. While some members of the Republican Party still subscribe to Trump’s delusions, others were clearly prepared to hit the reset and begin working across the aisle. In December 2020, House and Senate Democrats and Republicans, led by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; Bill Cassidy, R-La.; and the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus negotiated a bipartisan COVIDrelief bill that had previously been left for dead. Washington appeared to be on the precipice of turning in a new direction.
But the White House chose through the course of its first year — often with the unhelpful prompting of recalcitrant Republicans — to steer to the left. It was only under pressure from a group of 10 senators — five Democrats and five Republicans — that the president agreed to separate the bipartisan infrastructure package from the “transformational” social spending and climate change bill that later became Build Back Better. Separating the bipartisan package worked and America is better for it.
Today, a similar bipartisan group is tackling voting rights. The group, which includes Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., are focused on certification of voting results, which was the legal justification for the bad actors on Jan. 6. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled an openness to this approach. The bipartisan group is addressing elements of the Freedom to
Vote Act related to removal of local election officials, more rigorous post-election audits and standards of maintaining ballot integrity. Like the infrastructure bill, Biden has an opportunity, with the help of a committed and courageous group of centrist senators, to achieve a bipartisan win on voting rights that will move the nation forward.
We need to turn things around. The politicization of
Jan. 6 and voting rights, on both sides, is a perfect and timely example of our leaders believing that the best way forward is to exploit every advantage and press every angle to their adversaries’ disadvantage.
Enough. If our democracy is on the line, as both sides are so eager to argue, then the only way out is for both sides to work collaboratively in the national interest. This Jan. 6 was a reminder of how far we still have to go. Bipartisan legislation on voting rights is the path. Oh, and by the way, tackling inflation is next.