WASHINGTON – Joe Biden was elected on a pledge to heal the country and said Republicans would have an ‘epiphany’ of President Donald Trump that would eventually allow a two-party government.
That was before Trump resisted the peaceful transition of power, before a majority of House Republicans voted to confirm Biden’s election, before a mob attacked Congress, and before Democrats installed metal detectors on the House floor, and feared that their GOP colleagues would literally kill them.
Now, as Biden enters the entry stage that was overrun by rioters weeks ago on Wednesday, the former Senate setback, which boasted of its ability to work with even former segregationists, will be torn between its instincts for reconciliation and demands for accountability . to prevent this dark chapter of American history from being swept under the rug.
“It’s great that he wants to unite the country, but he should just as relentlessly strive for justice,” said Michael Beschloss, presidential historian of NBC News. “In almost every presidential decision, there is a tension between the unification of the country and its division, reconciliation and the pursuit of justice. But there are moments in history where it really flares up, and that is one of those moments.”
In the wake of the attack on the Capitol, Republicans said the wounds of the past would only cause the wound to eat Senator Marco Rubio, Florida, said“Biden has a historic opportunity to unite America” will be charged by Trump.
But Democrats view these pleas as hollow. They say leaving someone off the hook will be unpunished and encourage future attacks on democracy.
“Without accountability, there can be no unity,” Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said in a statement supporting a motion to investigate whether any GOP lawmakers violated their oath of office by entering insurgency.
The new Democratic government will now face a whole host of questions about how to deal with the outgoing.
Should Republican lawmakers be criticized or expelled if they played a role in the riot? Should Trump be investigated and prosecuted for potential crimes? What about members of his administration who, for example, participated in family separation at the border? Should Trump be welcomed as a member of the so-called former presidential club? Should he get the benefits and office grants that are awarded to former CEOs?
Biden has promised to be “a president for all Americans”, but does that include people who question or undermine American democracy? What about the millions of Trump voters who do not think he was legally elected?
More immediately, a new Democratic Senate will have to balance Trump’s indictment with Biden’s legislative agenda.
“Hopefully the trial will not be a long trial,” White House incoming chief of staff Ron Klain said Friday.
Biden will set the tone in his inaugural speech Wednesday. He will face a mostly deserted National Mall, which has been closed for security reasons, filled with National Guard troops in fatigue and guns instead of crowds of revelers.
“Except for Lincoln’s second inauguration, and perhaps for FDRs as well, it’s hard to think of a president who will take office when the idea of America has been tested more than in the past four years and four weeks,” he said. David Litt said. a former speechwriter in the White House of President Barack Obama.
But Litt said Biden could speak directly to the American people, most of whom accepted his election and were shocked by the riot, and could make a ‘calming influence’ on his experience and temperament.
“By simply being president, Biden will summon our better angels,” he said. “I think it will unite the Americans, or Republican politicians can recognize it.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, affixed to his memorial, was an eloquent call to ‘bind the wounds of the country’ in the waning days of the civil war, with ‘malice towards no one’ and ‘charity for all’.
However, some recent scholars have questioned whether Lincoln and his successors forgave too quickly and welcomed back into the fold officials of the defeated Confederacy, conciliatory movements that laid the foundation for decades of brutal white supremacy under the Jim Crow era.
“Historically, America is not very good at looking back. We tend to go on without fully taking into account the causes and effects of our darker hours,” said historian Jon Meacham, whose work Biden in the publicly quoted, said.
“It must change, and we have the opportunity to change it on our own time. There must be accountability for lies and transgression. And we must learn from our mistakes. You cannot heal wounds you choose to ignore,” added Meacham.
Senator Bob Casey, D-Pa., An ally of Biden from his hometown of Scranton, said Biden is uniquely well-positioned to try to realize his inaugural theme of “America United.”
“He will work on it every day and try to make agreements with Republicans where he can. He will be patient,” Casey said in an interview. “I think he will honestly be more patient than I would be, and I’m a very patient person. But that does not mean he will keep sticking out his hand and biting his hand every day.”
Yet Biden surprised many observers by deciding not to appoint Republicans in his cabinet and by not encouraging Trump to attend the inauguration next week. He did welcome Vice President Mike Pence.
President Gerald Ford has pardoned his disgraced predecessor, President Richard Nixon, in a controversial manner to avoid a ‘protracted and divisive debate’ over whether and how Nixon should be held accountable. And some, including former FBI Director James Comey, are now suggesting that Biden consider doing the same for Trump ‘as part of healing the country’.
Biden has already ruled out a pardon for Trump by saying in an MSNBC City Hall before the election that he would point himself completely at prosecutors and not get involved. And the fact that Democrats are going to control Congress means that the party’s leaders in the Capitol will decide what to do with problematic GOP members, enabling Biden to override those immediate decisions.
But the new president will set the tone for treating former Trump officials and defenders in public life.
Frank Sharry, who runs the liberal immigration reform group America’s Voice, said any government officials involved in Trump’s divorce policy, in which young children are removed from their parents and locked up in detention facilities, “should be pulled out of public life and avoided. by decent society for the rest of their lives. ‘
However, this would be a break from precedent. Incoming presidents largely avoided the sins of their predecessors.
Obama, for example, decided to formally punish officials who helped carry out the torture and just eavesdropping programs of President George W. Bush, saying, “We need to look ahead instead of looking back.”
Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia, said he hopes Biden will learn from his experience as Obama’s vice president.
“There’s a learning curve. Obama was very interested in duality. We joked in the early years that the only way to get a meeting with Obama was to be a Republican. And he got no credit for that. not, “Perriello said. “Obama wanted to be the Reagan of the Democratic Party and bring the country together – and he could do that – but the Republicans did not want to allow him.”
Perriello, who worked abroad and recovered from the civil war and is now the executive director of the Open Society Foundations US, said his experience in places like Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan showed him that unity in the short term long seed can sow. -terminal problems.
“A lack of accountability is the fastest way to instability and future division,” Perriello said. “Accountability can take many forms, whether it be prosecution, a truth commission.”
But it must have a remorse, something he believes a Catholic like Biden would understand.
“The Catholic Church is very big on forgiveness – but you have to confess,” he said.