Do unto others

The following article appeared Christmas Day in my news feed. While John Avlon is partisan, his article offers a glimpse of someone at least thinking about Americans working together for the common good. It's worth reading. The recent bipartisan stimulus package shows Congress in that light.

John Avlon (CNN) The spirit of the season promises "goodwill to all men." But practicing good faith in politics seems like a fool's errand these days.

President Donald Trump has corralled fanatical support for outright lies, with 126 Republican congressmen willing to support an attempt to overturn the election, while he meets in the Oval Office with conspiracy theorists who have advocated martial law. Fear and greed have proved their ability to corral partisan support. Extreme partisanship has made compromise feel like a four-letter word.

But there is a compelling alternative and it's coming to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden won the presidency with a campaign centered on good faith in politics. He ran as a uniter against a divider. In a time of hyper-partisan polarization, he promised "I'm running as a proud Democrat. But I will govern as an American president ... I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who do."

He expressed his commitment to restoring a civil society in an uncivil time. "We've got to change the nature of the way we deal with one another," Biden repeatedly said. "Don't question other men and women's motives. You can question their judgment, but not their motive."

Political life in the Trump era is full of reasons to believe this is naïve, as Biden has acknowledged. But because of Trump's toxic bluster, we have not focused enough on the success of Biden's core message and the fact that it helped him win more votes than anyone in American history.

Boil it down and you'll see it's a philosophy that is all but extinct in politics today: to treat other people as you would like to be treated. Politics predicated upon the Golden Rule might sound silly on the surface. This is simple kindergarten wisdom, rooted in the most basic enlightened self-interest. But some of the thorniest political debates become clearer when held up to this lens: the fight for equal rights is, at its essence, about treating other people as you would like to be treated. And for those who like to say they support "faith-based" politics, there's nothing more faith-based than this idea. It's the core of what Jesus preached at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:12) and is expressed in every major faith tradition.

In American politics, Abraham Lincoln expressed the Golden Rule when he said, "as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master" and when he railed against the idea that "there is no right principle of action but self-interest." After the Second World War, as President Harry S. Truman tried to rally the nation to win the peace through what would become the Marshall Plan and the United Nations, he gave a speech called "The Golden Rule for World Peace," in which he declared "I am asking you to exercise that admonition which we will find in the Gospels and which Christ told us was the way to get along in the world: 'Do by your neighbor as you would be done by.'"

But self-interest and situational ethics have been the overriding impulse of the Trump era. It extends well beyond the outgoing President's narcissism. It was on full display when Republican senators reversed their allegedly principled pledge to oppose Supreme Court nominations in a presidential election year, which they used to block Judge Merrick Garland and then promptly abandoned to push through Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The most indelible example has come in the weeks since the election, when Trump and a majority of his fellow Republicans have refused to recognize the reality of the election results without evidence and assert obvious lies like Trump won the election "by a landslide" and then use the rhetoric of violence and oppression in search of a remedy. It's not hard to imagine what they would say if a Democratic president did the same thing.

The Golden Rule has been MIA in American politics, dismissed as a sucker's bet in the Trump years. But democracy depends upon goodwill between fellow citizens, the moral sense that stops people from applying entirely different standards to their own side of the aisle. It is easily excused when we've been conditioned to seeing political opponents as personal enemies. But it bears repeating that much of the evil in the world comes from seeing and judging people as members of groups rather than individuals.

De-escalating this condition in our democracy will not happen overnight. Trust has declined and bipartisan muscle-memory has atrophied. There will be partisan pressures and plenty of pearl-clutching at the Democrat's slightest deviation from the high-road, used as an excuse to play the victim and scuttle any deal.

But Joe Biden is not an inexperienced idealist. He comes into the Oval Office with more years of public service than any president in modern history. He understands the use of power and the simple fact that elections have consequences. He also knows that the only way to get major legislation passed with an enduring mandate is to reach across the aisle -- which will require reasoned appeals and enough Republican senators who will negotiate in good faith on issues of common interest: from COVID-relief, to infrastructure and immigration reform and even climate change. There is still some common ground to be found in the conscience of individual senators.

Presidential leadership matters. Crucially, Joe Biden believes that decency can be the most practical form of politics. And that could make all the difference as we try to turn the page to a new chapter in our history, if we try to pull ourselves from our respective partisan ramparts and insist on treating other people as we would like to be treated.