What a pleasure it was to watch a real president give a truly thoughtful address to Congress, America and the world on Wednesday night.
Repeatedly, President Joe Biden addressed Congress as “all of you,” seeming to project a day when we won’t recognize congressional gridlock by blue or red, Republican or Democratic.
Biden was giving Republicans the benefit of a doubt, believing perhaps that if he thinks higher of them than all their no votes and threats of no votes to his initiatives – even the first one, the $1.9 billion coronavirus stimulus plan that significantly accelerated the pace of bringing 220 million shots to arms in slightly more than three months vs. the sluggish rollout by the Trump administration – then we Americans might yet see bipartisanship conducted on our behalf.
Biden needs that bipartisanship – defined here as thoughtful lawmaking – as much as we do. His second spending plan, a $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure proposal, has received bipartisan criticism, but not support.
Of that plan, Biden told Congress on Wednesday: “[Chinese President Xi Jinping] and other autocrats think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies – it takes too long to get consensus.”