Dear Mr. President: 10 letters of advice for Biden – By Monitor contributors (CS Monitor) / January 20 2021
What will it take to restore faith in America’s government? For Inauguration Day, we compiled 10 letters of advice for President Joe Biden on how to bring the country together.
In 10 letters to President Joe Biden, prominent public figures in business, academia, and public life weigh in on what he should do to bring the country together at a fraught time for American democracy.
Build a working coalition
By Leon E. Panetta
Mr. Panetta is a former director of the CIA and secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.
Dear Joe:
My deepest congratulations on your inauguration as the 46th president of the United States. Having known and worked with you for more than 40 years, I believe you are one of the most experienced and qualified individuals to serve as the nation’s commander in chief.
No one better understands the whirlwind of critical problems at home and abroad that you will be inheriting. And no one knows better how quickly you can fail if you are unable to build a bipartisan working majority in the House and Senate that will work with you to govern.
The nation cannot withstand four more years of partisan gridlock and dysfunction. In our democracy, we govern either by leadership or by crisis. If leadership is willing to take the risks necessary to build consensus, we can avoid or certainly contain crisis. But if leadership is not there, we will inevitably govern by crisis. But there is a price to be paid for relying on crisis – the loss of trust of the American people in our system of governing.
You know what it takes to work together to get things done. It is about building relationships, and the best time to build that working coalition is in the first 100 days of the new administration. The nucleus for that coalition can begin with the bipartisan members of the House and Senate who successfully worked on the last COVID-19 aid package.
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