Opinion | Biden can learn from Lincoln and his house divided speech

Francis S. Barry is the author of “Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy.”

President Biden’s recent speech in Normandy, highlighting the choice the world faces between democracy and autocracy, underscored what has been clear since he kicked off his reelection campaign in January: He is running as a democrat as much as a Democrat.

Can he turn the election into a referendum on democracy — and win? The answer might depend on whether he learns from a political blunder made by the man he often lionizes: Abraham Lincoln.

Biden’s defense of democracy in Normandy was so Mom and apple pie that it could easily have been given by every Republican president in the post-World War II era. Yet some Republicans attacked it as partisan. In fact, anytime Biden defends democracy, Republicans seek to paint him as the “divider in chief.” The campaign strategy they are deploying — graft your own biggest weakness onto your opponent — is how Lincoln found himself accused of pushing the country toward war in 1858, after he uttered a line that is one of the most famous and enduring pieces of political rhetoric.

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“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said, quoting from the New Testament, as he kicked off his campaign for the U.S. Senate. He was warning of what slavery’s supporters would attempt to do — legalize it everywhere — if they succeeded in spreading it into the territories, as allowed under the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Nearly every modern-day president has invoked Lincoln’s phrase, often as part of an appeal to national unity during election season. Usually forgotten, however, is that those words might have helped cost Lincoln the Senate race, as Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo has noted.

Although Lincoln aimed to inspire unity against the spread of slavery, Democrats turned the metaphor around on him, accusing him of inflaming tensions and pushing the country toward conflict — precisely what they themselves had been doing through their support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and growing talk of secession.

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Although belief in the Bible transcended partisanship, Lincoln’s all-or-nothing rhetoric gave his opponents an opening to paint him as a divisive extremist. Republicans are now doing much the same to Biden for attempting to rally voters around another sacred text — the Constitution — and arguing that MAGA Republicans threaten the country and democracy.

Given Republican support for the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Biden is justified in leveling this charge, just as Lincoln was in using the “house divided” metaphor. But that doesn’t mean he should.

Attacking Trump’s supporters, which did not work out for Hillary Clinton in 2016, allows Republicans to depict Biden’s appeals to unity as a fraud. Even worse, it affirms the way Donald Trump wants voters to see the election, which is the same way some in the South viewed the 1860 election — as Armageddon. Win or the country perishes.

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If Biden makes a parallel argument — win or democracy dies — he will be playing on Trump’s side of the field, where points are scored through fear and intimidation, giving Trump a decided advantage.

So what can Biden learn from Lincoln?

In his first debate with Stephen Douglas, where he was forced into a defensive posture over his “house divided” speech, Lincoln deployed four strategies Biden could benefit from.

First, he put his wit to work, mocking Douglas for his criticism of the biblical verse in ways that disarmed and endeared. Biden, who revels in Irish American blarney, should have more fun cutting Trump down to size. An old uncle who can crack up a room wins hearts.

Second, Lincoln separated himself from his party’s radical wing, assuring his audience that he was neither an abolitionist nor a believer in Black equality, and reaffirming his support for the right of enslavers to reclaim their “fugitives.” The Biden campaign should look for opportunities to underscore its separation from the party’s far left, especially on issues where Trump is inflaming fear, such as crime, “wokeism” and border security.

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Third, Lincoln went out of his way to express personal understanding of his opponents and solidarity with them, saying that Southerners “are just what we would be in their situation.” Biden should not hesitate to say much the same of Trump’s supporters. Doing so will strengthen his call for unity by sending a more welcoming message to undecided voters, depriving Republicans of the kind of advantage they gained from Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” remark.

Fourth, and most crucially, Lincoln reframed the debate. Without giving an inch on the principle that mattered most to him — upholding what he saw as the Founders’ vision of containing slavery for the purpose of eventually extinguishing it — he emphasized how local differences are part and parcel of the “bonds of Union.” In other words, as long as Americans kept faith with the Founders, a house divided against itself could stand.

Biden, too, can refuse to give an inch on the principle that matters most to him: the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power. But at the same time, he can highlight how tolerance of differences, even on the most controversial issues, is part of what unifies the nation. A bitterly divided people can stand together, as long as we hold to the rule of law and what sustains it: respecting election outcomes.

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Although these tactics were not enough to carry Lincoln to victory in 1858, they ultimately helped lift him into the White House, where they remained hallmarks of his leadership.

Having retired his “house divided” line, Lincoln used his inaugural address to embrace secessionists as “friends,” to refer to their shared “bonds of affection” and to call upon the “better angels of our nature” to “swell the chorus of the Union.” Although he could not prevent war, his refusal to engage in righteous condemnation of his opponents helped him win over Northern Democrats, earn reelection and save the country.

If Biden runs a house-divided campaign, Lincoln’s 1858 fate will loom over him. But if he runs a better-angels campaign, he could again swell the chorus of the Union — and begin, as Lincoln had hoped to do in his second term, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

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