It came as no surprise that Joe Biden’s clarion call for unity quickly devolved into a definitional food fight. Every time the new president dropped the u-word during his inaugural speech, you just knew that Mitch McConnell’s lower lip was quivering, even as rhetorical retorts danced in his head.
Alas, in this malignant moment of putrid politics, when it comes to the meaning of unity, there is no unity. Only an overabundance of sophistry.
McConnell whined to Fox News the other day about how Biden “talks a lot about unity,” but continues to push the Democrats’ agenda. Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that the president’s call for unity was a “lie” because the person he chose to direct the administration’s Iran policy was not sufficiently hawkish.
Another Republican senator, John Cornyn of Texas, put out a tweet lambasting Biden for ignoring unity by overturning Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. Not to be outdone, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told Politico that Biden turned his back on unity by offering a plan that would give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. A large majority of Americans support the President’s position on both issues (here and here).
In each case, these Republicans defined unity as the process of giving them what they want. How utterly silly. Someone sticks a gun in your face and says, “Give me your money.” If you hand over your money, are you then in unity with your robber? Of course not. Capitulation is not unity.
The Cambridge Dictionary offers this simple definition of unity: “the state of being joined together.” That nicely captures the heart of Biden’s inaugural peroration on the subject. Said the President: “My whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation, uniting to fight the common foes we face: Anger, resentment, hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence. Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.”
In other words, we can disagree with each other on everything from tax policy to environmental regulation, but we remain “joined together” as Americans. We can do passionate political battle over ideas and values, and still respect each other as members of the American family. This type of unity is more of an aspirational construct than a governance rulebook. That’s why Biden, in his inaugural address, called unity, “. . .that most elusive of things in a democracy.”
Other dictionaries define unity as “agreement, accord, a condition of harmony.” This is the meaning many congressional Republicans are attaching to the word. However, they go much further and posit – self-servingly – that only by agreeing with them can there be unity.
It’s important to remember the context for President Biden’s unity speech. He spoke those words only days after his predecessor sicced a violent mob on the Capitol in a last ditch effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election. It was the lowest point for American unity in our lifetimes. No serious person could rationally conclude that the Joe Biden who left retirement in the twilight of his life to “restore America’s soul” would see unity as capitulating to the Republicans.
Besides, even in better times, why would we want the type of unity that insists on an absence of disagreement? Vigorous debate over clashing viewpoints is the lifeblood of democracy. Voicing contrary opinions in places like Russia and North Korea will get you killed or sent to prison.
Donald Trump was a master at creating that kind of forced unity, all based on people blindly following him. He called folks who disagreed with him traitors or treasonous. He pushed Republicans to make the party’s platform whatever Trump wanted it to be. Even after inciting a deadly insurrection, the vast majority of congressional Republicans stand united with him. That’s the kind of unity to avoid at all cost.
And it certainly wasn’t the kind of unity President Biden summoned us to in his inaugural address. He didn’t equate unity with unanimity, nor did he call for the elimination of all opinions other than his own. His plea to this very broken and angry country was simply to chill a bit, to take a collective deep breath, to turn down the vitriol a few notches, to remember that we are all Americans and that we are in this together.
Early in my newspaper career, I covered the Minnesota Legislature. There was a phrase I heard often in those days, from lawmakers of both parties: “Let’s agree to disagree.” I was young and cynical then, and always rolled my eyes when the line was spoken. It seemed trite and obvious. Looking back, however, I realized that those legislators – in a very different political climate – were doing what Biden called on us to do now. They dealt respectfully with each other, agreeing on some issues and agreeing to disagree on others, all without the need to call in the National Guard. Agreeably disagreeing was unity.
We are lightyears away from that kind of environment right now. Members of Congress are wearing bulletproof vests and require police protection when traveling. The Washington Post just ran a story about the juxtaposition of a restaurant and a hospital in Michigan. The restaurant defied state laws on mask wearing and social distancing in order to cater to customers who believed the pandemic was a product of a left wing, socialist hoax. Like minded folks drove miles out of their way in order to dine like it was 2019. Down the road, the local hospital’s intensive care unit was filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients.
Yet, there is every reason to believe that our long journey back to the civility of unity has begun. In the nearly three weeks our new president has been in office, we haven’t heard a single insult out of the White House. Biden seems to have gone out of his way to avoid talking about Trump or his impeachment. On top of all that, he spent two hours last week hosting a meeting of Senate Republicans in the Oval Office.
Although it now appears that the president’s $1.9 billion stimulus bill will be passed with only Democratic votes, don’t believe the predictable punditry about Biden backtracking on unity. He can do two things at the same time: Seriously listen to and consider Republican arguments and suggestions for change, and get the best package possible for the Americans who desperately need it.
That’s what agreeing to disagree is all about.