America is divided – but Joe Biden is the right person to bring people together

Joe Biden must bring America together – and he will. He has a better chance than anyone of bridging the yawning chasms between the nation’s many tribes, which have increasingly and sadly sought to cut themselves off from each other.

This is not just about Democrats and Republicans. It is about rural and city; about Main Street and Wall Street; about young and old; about white and the many shades of people of colour; about college-educated and high-school leavers; about people of faith and those with secular views; and most essentially of all, about women and men.  

In his first speech as president-elect, Mr Biden uttered the memorable words: “This is the time to heal in America.” His task will be to rule for the losers, as well as the winners. In the rough trade of democracy there has to be a winner and a loser. There can only be one president. But while he has amassed more than 75 million votes, the most in the nation’s history, Donald Trump has received some 71 million, the second largest tally ever recorded. Those people are just as important to the future of the nation and indeed the world.  

There are two ways of writing about this need for compromise and conciliation.  

One is to look at the mechanics of the US political system. Under the division of powers, the president proposes but Congress disposes. In that sense, Mr Biden will be much constrained, for not only will he in all probability have to deal with a Republican Senate, but the Democrats have lost ground in the House of Representatives and will be aware that they may face a Republican revival in the mid-term elections.  

As it happens, though, Mr Biden is extremely well-qualified to shepherd policy through a divided Congress. He has spent his life knowing how to make the political system work in such a way that the administration’s main priorities can be moved into law. We have seen what happens when an outsider occupies the White House. Now we have an insider. Things will get done.

There is, however, another way of looking at this need for harmony. It is to look not at voting calculations, but at human relations, the way people manage their day-to-day lives. Washington politics will inevitably be about votes, about specific trade-offs, about compromises, about deals and indeed about money.  

But most people’s lives involve getting along with others of different views, backgrounds and beliefs. They involve, or at least are smoothed by, courtesy and mutual respect. It is a big country and there is room for many shades of difference. It would be astounding if a garage owner in Montana had the same priorities as a lawyer in New York, or if a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco saw the same problems and imagined the same solutions as an office-cleaner in Miami. But these are all members of US society.

So both winners and losers in the election should be encouraged by Mr Biden’s words in that first speech: “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify. Who doesn’t see red and blue states, but a United States. And who will work with all my heart to win the confidence of the whole people.”

For no one in America should be a winner or a loser. All should welcome a return to civility. It is now for the president-elect to show that he can indeed win the confidence of the whole people, including, and perhaps especially, those who did not vote for him.