Needed in the US: grace in victory and defeat - opinion

This is not the time for Democrats or Biden to gloat or be vindictive, but for empathy and understanding.

By HERB KEINON
Supporters of US President Donald Trump participate on a 'Stop the Steal' protest at the Georgia State Capitol. US November 7, 2020. (photo credit: REUTERS/DUSTIN CHAMBERS)
Supporters of US President Donald Trump participate on a 'Stop the Steal' protest at the Georgia State Capitol. US November 7, 2020.
(photo credit: REUTERS/DUSTIN CHAMBERS)
On May 10, 1940, the same day Hitler invaded Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium, Winston Churchill became Britain’s prime minister following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.
Churchill, 65 at the time, had prepped his whole life for that moment, having held every senior ministerial position, except for foreign secretary, since becoming a parliament member at the age of 25.
That fateful night he wrote, “At last I had the authority to give direction over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”
While the men, the times and the dangers are not to be compared, Churchill’s line about “all my past life has been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial” could have been written Saturday night by Joe Biden, upon passing the 270 electoral college threshold needed to win the US presidency.
Biden, who will be 13 years Churchill’s senior when he will take the oath of office on January 20, has prepared his whole life for this moment as well, having first been elected to the US Senate at the age of 30.
US President Donald Trump used Biden’s long political career against him during the recent campaign, saying that Biden did nothing notable in his 47 years of public service, including eight as vice president.
But those 47 years of service – legislating, building coalitions, compromising, making mistakes – has, one hopes and prays, prepared him to deal with this fraught hour of American history.
This is the time, as was the case when Abraham Lincoln won the election in 1860 and the US was on the verge of civil war, for Biden to be gracious in victory to the 70 million voters who voted for Trump and who should not be summarily dismissed as misguided, or worse.
“We are not enemies, but friends,” Lincoln said to his fellow Americans in his first inaugural address just two months before the outbreak of war. “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
This is not the time for Democrats or Biden to gloat or be vindictive, but for empathy and understanding, even if those characteristics would most likely not have been displayed by Trump had he come out on top. This is the time for Biden to tap into and unleash the better angels of America’s nature.
One of the flaws that has crept into the US system over the last number of years is a sense that to the winner go the spoils, all of them, and that the party that holds the presidency can do whatever it wants, with the opposition unable to do much about it.
That was evident under former president Barack Obama, who used executive orders and agreements to an unprecedented degree, thereby bypassing the need for legislation.
“Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress,” read a New York Times analysis in 2016, “Mr. Obama has sought to act however he could. In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the Republicans wanted — one that depended on bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency.”
Obama joined the Paris Climate Agreement unilaterally, without it being ratified by the Senate, as well as the Iranian nuclear agreement.
Why? Because he could.
So it should not have come as any surprise to anyone that when Trump came into power, the same rules would apply. For instance, he pulled the US out of both the Paris Agreement and the Iranian nuclear deal.
The most recent example of this “I’ll-do-it-because-I-can” style of governing was Trump’s recent appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. The Republicans opposed Obama’s appointment of a Supreme Court justice during his final year in office, and prevented it, but then went ahead and did the same thing that they railed against four eyes earlier. Why? Because they could.
For America to get back on track, for Biden to get the US back on track, what is needed is humility and a recognition that even if you can do certain things, maybe you shouldn’t, and that not all wisdom or justice rests with you simply because you have the power.
And if Biden needs to be gracious in victory, so too should the Republicans be gracious in defeat, or at least in their loss of the White House. Responsible leadership in the party needs to emerge that will not follow Trump’s petulant refusal to accept the election results.
The Republicans, for the good of a country, also need to resist the temptation to do to Biden what a good number of Democrats did to Trump: label his presidency illegitimate from even before he was inaugurated, and do everything to prevent him from being able to govern.
The Trump administration was not given 100 days of grace, and even before he was sworn in there were chants in the streets of “He is not our President,” as well as talk among legislators about impeaching him. America suffered as a result.
For America to return to itself, what is needed is the realization that everything that comes around, goes around; that if your party is on top today, it is likely to be on the bottom tomorrow; and that you should not do to your political opponents, what you would not have them do to you.