YELLOW MATTER CUSTARD

UNITY CORLEONE STYLE

Mario Cuomo, the former Governor of New York and father of Andrew, its current Governor and the Sonny Corleone of American politics and the dim-witted   Chris, its Fredo,   once said, aptly, you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.  In other words,  all the uplifting, inspiring, soaring rhetoric (think Hope and Change, Build that Wall or even Lock Her Up) that you are free to dispense during a campaign may get you elected,  but  eventually  crashes head on with the realities of governing.  A refinement of Cuomo’s observation that will soon become very evidently applicable to Joe Biden would be that (most) politicians campaign on unity but govern on division. No matter how much a politician campaigns on unifying,  once in office he immediately sets out to cram as much of his agenda down the throats of the opposition as he possibly can. Certainly Joe Biden will be no different, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary and the hollow words of his inaugural address which will draw the biggest crowd of National Guardsmen in history – sorry Donald.  Joe Biden made a hallmark of his campaign that he will reunite America and be a president for all Americans.  Lifting one of Obama’s signature lines (plagiarizing in 1988 forced him out of the presidential race but didn’t raise an eyebrow in 2020, so important was it to defeat Donald Trump), he repeatedly rejected the notion of red states or blue states and said he would govern for all as the president of the United States.  He can’t. He shouldn’t. He won’t.  

The simple reality of politics is that it is inherently divisive no matter what the politicians say.  Vote for me, not for the other guy. What could be more divisive? There is no compromise here: a strict and unequivocal either / or.  The reality that you govern in division is a corollary of another immutable political truth:  to the winner goes the spoils.  And as far as the office of president is concerned, Joe Biden is the winner. Let’s not forget how that win happened.  A lot of the farther left of the Democrat party had to hold their noses and vote for him because their hatred of Donald Trump was even greater than their disdain for him who they see as an old time pol without the intellectual or physical stamina to fight for their transformative agenda, not to mention a racist and a misogynist. Their loyalty to him is tenuous at best and he comes to office arguably with the weakest support among those who voted for him of any president in modern history and perhaps ever.  He cannot afford to alienate them.  They don’t believe in him and his vision, which at this point has probably declined as much as his cognitive abilities. He has no vision. How could he? He has never believed in anything but political self-preservation and advancement.  They will rightfully be looking to him to do the one thing that they put him there to do – erase as much of what Donald Trump did as possible.   Like Frank Sheeran in The Irishman (forgive the mixed metaphor), Biden paints houses and his job is to splash as much red as he can over the Trump (political) Tower. Consider too that like any good hitman his long term survival (and yes, I’m talking literally here) might not be in the best interests of his employers, but that is for another day.

So Joe won’t be giving the call for unity any chance to rest and sink in before he goes to work fulfilling his divisive duty.  His inaugural call for unity will be nothing more than a call for his opposition to surrender.  Look no further than his proposed immigration bill which would give citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens and doesn’t even offer the illusory fig leaf of enhanced border security, which typically is sufficient to attract a few of the Republicans who would otherwise willingly go along.  Maybe that will come in negotiation when he offers them the sleeves off of his vest.   It’s  also no secret that the Executive Orders  wiping out  as much of the las four years as possible without Congressional cooperation are written and waiting to be signed ASAP.  Rejoin The Paris Climate deal. Kill the XL Pipeline and all those fossil fuel jobs. End the Muslim travel ban. Rejoin the WHO (the Wuhan Health Organization?).  BUDDA-BING! 

These are all things he said he would do and now should do since he won. While his voters have every right to expect and demand that he do them, there is not a single action that he is signaling that is the least bit palatable to the Trump voter. He will not do a single thing that could be said to extend an olive branch to Trump’s very sizeable base. A very easy gesture would be to decline to rejoin the WHO because of its subservience to China where the virus originated. This move actually would even bolster one of Biden’s other positions  that he will be tough on China and rebut one of his alleged weaknesses that he is too accommodating of China. It would be largely devoid of substance but something he could point to as evidence that he is trying to govern for both sides of the political divide.  He won’t even do that. His supporters won’t let him.

So when Joe Biden is giving his inauguration address it might be worthwhile once again to consider The Godfather; specifically the final scene where Michael is standing Godfather in the blessed sacrament of Baptism to his newborn nephew whose mother he has made a widow even as his lieutenants are ruthlessly murdering all of his opposition so he can consolidate his power.  It’s perhaps the greatest cinematic depiction of the ultimate act of hypocrisy. With Joe Biden and a call for national unity in his inaugural address, it’s like that. But don’t be too hard on Sleepy Joe; after all, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.  As for unity — it sleeps with the fishes.