Biden’s Success Is Not in His Hands

In the eyes of the Trump camp, Joe Biden’s pledge does not promise healing; it is an attack. He will not succeed in healing the country if those dividing it do not want him to.

Donald Trump is gone, Joe Biden is the new U.S. president, and the message he communicated at his inauguration was the same one he has proclaimed throughout his campaign: to heal the divided nation, reconcile it, unite it. That is a lovely message, but it does not really hold.

Although he focused his speech particularly on how Americans should treat each other and emphasized — clearly affected by the events of Jan. 6 — that in a democratic society political differences should not lead to opponents becoming enemies, the Democrats and their voters do in fact see the word ‘‘healing” as encompassing much more than just that, and this became clear that same day.

Healing also means taking climate change seriously. Healing also means tackling racism properly, at long last, not fighting the multiethnic and multicultural society but celebrating and shaping it. To those who voted for Trump’s plan in 2016 and 2020 to reinstate and defend the privileges of white Americans, Biden’s pledge does not promise healing; it is an attack.

It is fine if Biden plays the pastor for a few days and preaches love thy neighbor. However, it is not in his hands how the opposing side reacts, and he should not base his policy on this either. Whether the Republican Party’s leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, really is open to collaboration, as he now says he is, or whether he tries to sabotage whatever is in his power, as he did under Barack Obama, is not for Biden to decide. This can only be decided by McConnell and the Republicans, who have spent the past four years taking advantage of and embracing Trump’s revolutionary nationalist discourse.

Should all votes held in both houses of Congress stick strictly to party lines, Biden may be able to implement quite a bit, so long as he keeps the Democrats united. However, he will not be able to do anything about the divisions in the country if those dividing it do not want him to.