“We must end this uncivil war,” Joe Biden proclaimed shortly he became the 46th president on Wednesday noon. Hours earlier, in his last moments as the 45th president, Donald Trump extended “our best wishes” to the “new president.” Graceful words, but accompanied in each case by sharp and in some cases deserved attacks. Our presidents since George Washington have come to office through an inevitably adversarial process, and while they may inspire “unity” on occasion, that’s more the exception than the rule.
That process has become especially adversarial in times of close division, such as the polarized partisan parity prevailing since the 1990s. Biden is the fifth consecutive president taking office with his party holding majorities in both houses of Congress. But those majorities proved evanescent for both his two Democratic and his two Republican predecessors, and his party’s current margins in the House and Senate are just as precarious as George W. Bush’s were 20 years ago.
