Can Joe Biden make the City on a Hill shine?

The sad and angry words needed to castigate the British climate must now be redeployed to the climate of American politics. What a mess. What a nightmare. What an unutterable shambles.

The Capitol embodies a secular sacredness. Surely such a building ought to be inviolate. In baleful contemplation of troubles in London during the 1830s, Thomas Arnold the Headmaster said: “Flog the mob and hurl the Leaders from the Tarpeian Rock.” Tempting. But some early Marxist itinerant window-breaker once described revolutions as festivals of the oppressed. On all sides, a large number of Americans are feeling oppressed. As a result, the civilities of public life are breaking down, and this cannot all be blamed on Trump. In the States, much has been going wrong for many years.

It all seemed so different just after the War. Almighty armed forces. Almighty Detroit. The almighty dollar. Good jobs for Joe Sixpack and Hank Hardhat. Russia was a threat and had to be contained. She was, in the strategy outlined by George Kennan in his long telegram.

America seemed ready to confront every challenge, until she tried one and failed. The psychic consequences of defeat in Vietnam were severe. But then, happy days were here again. Ronald Reagan had a simple mind – as opposed to a weak one – and a simple faith. He understood the principles necessary for the restoration of American greatness. He won the Cold War and under his successor, the US fought a Bismarckian war in Kuwait. The Americans were now the sole super power. But the limitations of that were rapidly exposed.

First, the heavy industrial staples which had underpinned American living standards came under challenge. Second, from the 1960s onwards, economic and class-based political allegiances began to give way to so-called identity politics, the forerunner of the culture war conflicts of recent years. Third, as discontents forced themselves up the agenda, this applied a fortiori to the one major group who had not come voluntarily to America to better themselves: black Americans. Finally, the Americans could not resist the temptation to try to sort out the Middle East.

So by 2016, America was afflicted by discontent and instability was growing; conditions ideal for Donald Trump. With that in mind, it would be foolish to assume that he will easily disappear from history. His opponents may hate him and therefore assume that their fiery political emotions will cauterise Trumpery. That is foolishly optimistic. Although his lies and vulgarity may offend millions of his fellow-Americans, he received the second highest Presidential vote in American history. Millions of Americans believe that he speaks for them, that his political opponents hate everything decent in America – and that they stole the election.

In view of that, the first priority for the new President ought to be national unity. The US needs someone to make Americans feel good about themselves: a poor man’s Ronald Reagan. This is almost certainly in tune with Joe Biden’s political instincts; a conservative Democrat, he is a natural deal-maker. He would find it easy to reach across the Senate Chamber and conciliate opponents, in a way that was common-place in the Senate a generation ago. But that is the point. Those were the mores of a previous generation. They have been replaced by bitterness and unrelenting partisanship.

A great deal will depend on Biden. First, what does he actually believe? Would he like to pack the Supreme Court and to confer statehood on Puerto Rico and Washington DC? If so, we would face years of embittered debate, probably accompanied by violence. Or would he set up committees to explore all this, which would in effect kick the idea well into the Congressional long grass? If he did that, the increasingly large Left-wing of the Democratic Party would go berserk. Does this matter?

Much is opaque about Joe Biden, but on one point, we can be sure. Whether or not he is still President in late 2024, he will not be standing for a second term. So he has no further need to conciliate the Democratic Left. That leads us to the most important question about the President-elect. How much stamina does he possess? Is he still capable of making decisions and enforcing them? Or will the Biden White House become a snake-pit full of competing advisors, in which case we can be certain of a weak and divided administration, cheer-leading for a weak and divided country? America deserves better. The world needs better. We can only hope.

As for Donald Trump, we can be certain that he will leave office with as little grace as possible. Then the lawyers will pounce. The President does not have the power to pardon himself, and anyway, a pardon would only apply to Federal crimes. It seems likely that the Republican party’s oxygen supply will be drained away to a score of courtrooms where Trump is defending himself. Republicans need the Trump base. They do not need the Trump squalor. They may find that the two are inseparable: that they can neither live with Trump, not without him.

The City on a Hill is unlikely to be sending forth beacons of light for some time to come.