Daily Times

If Charles Dickens’ best of times could be magically transplanted to today’s America, what would that world look like? To say that Republicans and Democrats have diametrically opposed views on virtually every issue is a great understatement. Hence, it becomes self-evident how these two parties would see their respective best of times.

For Republicans, the radically progressive Democratic agenda of re-engineering American society through the $6-trillion-dollar American Rescue, Jobs and Families Plans would be defeated and rolled back. Challengers to Trump’s legacy, such as as Liz Cheney, would be consigned to political Siberia; in fact, the daughter of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney is already set to face a vote on her fate within the party. She and others would be replaced with a slew of Trump-approved candidates and, as a result, the Republicans would win back both Houses of Congress in 2022. In the meantime, a scorched earth policy would deny the Biden administration any further political victories.

For Democrats, the best of times looks exactly the opposite. Whether through congressional manoeuvres or other means, the President’s Jobs and Families bills would pass. While the Republicans, either at the hands of the courts, Liz Cheney or the party itself, would come to realise that the time for lies and falsehoods is over, thereby neutering Trump’s influence and restoring the Gand Old Party to the GOP once more. On the foreign policy front, Biden’s insistence on a global competition between democracies and autocracies, while defending the rules-based and liberal world order. would become a rallying cry to check Chinese and Russian ambitions and actions. And once the Covid-19 crisis ended, in large measure through widespread vaccinations as during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, the nation would embark on a second period of explosive economic growth; though minus the Great (Wall Street) Crash of 1929.

Biden’s ambitious Rescue, Jobs and Families Plans will likely be defeated by a Republican filibuster in the Senate, leaving these crucial infrastructure programmes either languishing or underfunded. Absent a political miracle — Dickens’ worst of times will present itself as a far more expected set of outcomes

Clearly, this best of times is more Panglossian than Dickensian and is the least likely of futures. Yet given that the United States is a nation currently and irreversibly divided along partisan lines, no matter the issue at hand, and that it is home to a Congress that lacks civility and compromise — what, realistically, is the best that can happen?

In all likelihood, the Biden White House’s highly ambitious plans will be defeated by a Republican filibuster in the Senate or else by private sector lobbying to prevent passage in both Houses. As a result, these critically needed infrastructure programmes will either languish or be deliberately underfunded. Thus, absent a political miracle, Dickens’ worst of times will present itself a far more expected set of outcomes.

Republicans will prove more loyal to Trump than to the traditional values of the GOP and the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan and George HW Bush. And Trumpistas would be nominated to run for the House in 2022. Such an environment would make the Democrats even more hostile to their political rivals while Congress would collapse as it proved incapable of meeting the nation’s needs. Yet, two better outcomes are not inconceivable. Both have roots in history

First, Liz Cheney and other conservative Republicans could prevail. While the ‘big lie’ of Trump losing the election remains convincing to a majority of Republicans for the time being, political structures based on delusions or lies are impossible to sustain. Greece and Rome fell in part because of both. Hitler’s lie about Aryan dominance and the Soviet Union’s dependence on dismissing or lying about the weaknesses of its economy and the virtues of Communism largely caused implosion.

At some point, the Republicans might come to their senses although it will take a smoking cannon to break Trump’s stranglehold on the party. While the parallel is not exact, it still bodes well to remember that Republican Senators ultimately censured and drove Joe McCarthy from office who, for years, based his influence on outright lies about the numbers of communists serving in high office. Perhaps it was no accident that Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, was McCarthy’s chief legal counsel.

Second, it appears that Covid-19 is waning. Given government spending and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the stock markets, it is exceedingly likely that another boom is in the offing, to the extent that even a paralysed government could not fail to match the success of the Roaring Twenties. If history repeats or rhymes, the best of times would be an economic renaissance, thereby correcting many social and economic inequalities and disparities.

Republicans and Democrats should review this history. The fall of Joe McCarthy and his house of lies may be relevant. And for Democrats, a booming economy, if properly channeled could achieve much of Biden’s aspirations regarding modernising infrastructure and investing in families. These indeed could be the best of times.

The challenge, of course, is to follow the advice of someone who today hardly would be considered a Republican: Abraham Lincoln and allow “our better angels” to flourish.

Dr Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist and Senior Advisor at Washington, DC’s Atlantic Council. His latest book is ‘The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Threat to a Divided Nation and the World at Large’