By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS—When he struck a deal with moderate Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate on the infrastructure plan, President Joe Biden had more than updating and maintaining roads and bridges in mind.

He also wanted to rebuild the Senate—and prove our government can work as it should.

It will be in the nation’s interest if he’s able to do it.

If this deal holds—and that’s a sizable “if”—it will be because the Senate once again played the role it is supposed to play in our system of representative self-government.

That chamber of Congress was intended to be the place where moderation would occur, where compromises could be negotiated, where the members could take a long view and see that satisfying as many constituencies as possible was in the best interests of the nation.

That is why senators have longer terms of office—six years—than other elected officials. The extended stay in office was meant to insulate senators from the passions of heated moments and allow for deliberation, even under political pressure. It also aimed to allow senators, even those from opposing parties, time to develop relationships of trust and respect that would help them work through difficult and contentious questions.

Almost all the Senate’s rules and customs, many of which have been discarded, ignored or trampled upon in recent years, were designed to encourage negotiation and resolution. Even the now much-maligned filibuster served a purpose. It prevented the majority party from running roughshod over the minority one.

In this past decade, both Republicans and Democrats have had the experience of being in the minority. Each side has had its concerns dismissed as unimportant and its interests treated with contempt when the other party has had the upper hand.

The result has been that Americans have seesawed back and forth between abrupt policy shifts with each new change of power. Each partisan putsch has increased the levels of rage and resentment across the land, taking us to the point that we Americans more often snarl at rather than speak with each other.

This is not the way it should be.

But that is why Joe Biden may be the right president for this moment and its challenges.

Unlike every president since Gerald Ford, he has been and is a creature of the legislative process. In fact, no president since Lyndon Johnson has had Biden’s deep understanding of the Senate, its rhythms and its rituals. He remembers what the Senate once was—and has expended a fair bit of political capital trying to prod it into becoming America’s great deliberative body once again.

He spoke to that end when he announced the deal after meeting with the moderate senators. The president was asked what guarantee he had that the deal could make it through Congress.

Biden replied that he couldn’t offer any guarantees, but then he spoke about the importance of relationships in the Senate.

He said he trusted Mitt Romney, one of the architects of the compromise, the Republican senator from Utah and the 2012 GOP presidential nominee. He said the same about other Republicans who were part of the group that put the package together.

The president added that this did not mean that they don’t have serious disagreements over priorities and policies—they do—but that they could work through them if they listened to and worked with each other.

Biden’s message was implied but not subtle. It was this: If we Americans start treating each other with respect and consideration once more, then many more of our problems can and will be solved.

There will be more disputes over the infrastructure package the moderate senators put together and Biden endorsed. Partisans on both the right and the left have legitimate reasons not to like parts of it.

But that’s the nature of a compromise.

No one gets everything he or she wants.

But neither does anyone walk away from the table with nothing he or she wants.

Such arrangements aren’t perfect, but this isn’t a perfect world.

If it were, bridges wouldn’t weaken over time and roads wouldn’t crumble.

But they do, and every now and then, they must be rebuilt and repaired.

The same, it seems, go for our system of government.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

The City-County Observer posted this article without bias or editing.