As was said by Abraham Lincoln one hundred and fifty-five years ago, so still it must be said: “With malice

As was said by Abraham Lincoln one hundred and fifty-five years ago, so still it must be said: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
Our nation is wounded again. In 1865, there were more than 500,000 dead from civil war. In 2020, there are more than 200,000 dead from disease, plus a small but growing body count from street violence sparked by police shootings. At perhaps no point in between have political passions been so vindictive.

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Right now, one big political fight — the presidential election — is nearing its climax. Another, over the Supreme Court, has suddenly resurfaced with the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Each has only two possible outcomes: either the Republican or Democratic candidate will be elected President, and the next Justice will be installed by either the incumbent President or the next one. The daggers are drawn, and both duels will soon be settled. That much is unavoidable.
Whether or not the partisan bloodletting is followed by healing depends on the conduct of the winning side in the presidential contest.
Either the victor will indulge malice and vindictiveness, and so ensure that our Republic continues to bleed until it lies dead on the ground; or else, by following Mr. Lincoln’s example, the winner will nurse the Union back into health and stand it once more on its feet.
We cannot expect the latter from the incumbent President. Donald Trump — may he soon recover from his brush with Covid-19 — exudes malice. He has shown us as much for four years, and he will not change.
Joe Biden perhaps has the character and temperament to heal the nation. Yet his election, if he is elected, will not in itself be enough to do so. It is not sufficient merely to have a “Good Emperor.” To maintain a republic, there must be no emperors, and thus the fear and contempt that lead people to seek one must be stemmed.
Mr. Biden can do this, or at least begin it. There are four bandages he could apply to staunch the bleeding, none of which are inherently partisan.
He must first set aside those in his party whose “attachment to their country itself, is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects” — as Edmund Burke derided the radicals of the French Revolution — and instead cultivate thoughtful pride, to replace hollow flag-waving, in the one thing that all Americans have in common: our country. To his credit, he has already begun to do so.
As polarization will not fade overnight, the next act of triage is to make politics less winner-take-all by decentralizing decision-making, when constitutional and practical, to state and local governments. Mr. Biden can begin by simply not wielding federal funds as a weapon for bending cities and states to his will.
Decentralization might be a difficult sell to today’s Democratic Party, given the long history of excuse-making for slavery and segregation with hollow “states’ rights” arguments. Yet federalism, done right, stands on enlightened political ideas. It accommodates regional and cultural differences in a large republic by