Joe Biden's eulogy for Strom Thurmond shows political opponents don't have to be enemies

Erich Prince | The News Journal

Erich J. Prince is the co-founder of Merion West, a Philadelphia-based group promoting civil discourse in the age of polarization.

Fifteen years ago this June, then-Senator Joe Biden gave perhaps the most memorable of all political eulogies.

Part of it was surely the letter of it, the many quotable lines and his ruminations on the nature of friendship and what it means to change in politics. But, most of all, it was the person for whom it was being delivered: an ideological rival of the greatest proportions, someone about as far removed as possible from a self-described “Northeast liberal.”

It was for Strom Thurmond, a man whose very name was synonymous with defending the racial policies of the Old South.

But Joe Biden traveled to Edgefield, South Carolina to speak on behalf of his late colleague. From the beginning of his remarks, Mr. Biden seemed strikingly aware of his fish-out-of-water role, delivering the eulogy for a man whose views were so distant from his own.

Biden had come to the Senate, as a young man, with civil rights very much on his mind. He was there to fight the likes of Mr. Thurmond, but then he “met the man.”

“I disagreed deeply with Strom on the issue of Civil Rights and on many other issues, but I watched him change. We became good friends," Biden said.

And Biden continued, almost giving the benefit of the doubt to a man whose views so many found so painful: “The place in which I work is a majestic place ... You cannot, if you respect those with whom you serve, fail to understand how deeply they feel about things differently than you.”

As extreme an example as it may be, if Biden can develop a healthy working relationship with a segregationist, perhaps there’s hope for our polarized times.

With members of Congress singing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" to colleagues after an important vote, State of the Union outbursts, and the complete inability, for many, to utter a single kind word about a political opponent, perhaps it’s worth remembering Mr. Biden’s words that day in South Carolina.

Today, 70 percent of Democrats call Republicans “close-minded,” and nearly half of Republicans return the favor and describe Democrats as “more immoral” than the average American. Among consistent conservatives and consistent liberals, around a quarter of each expressed disappointment at the prospect of a family member marrying someone from the other party.

However, similar Pew studies suggest that having even a couple of close friends from the opposite party can help people get along. To this effect, researchers found that a Republican was half as likely to describe a generic Democrat as “cold,” if he had at least some friends who were Democrats.

Perhaps this is among the reasons that stories of cross-party friendships carry the weight that they do. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who served as an aide to Tip O’Neill, described the well-known friendship between his boss, a liberal stalwart, and President Reagan. Sharing a light moment in a back room before Reagan’s first State of the Union, Reagan put personal acrimony aside, remarking, "The speaker says that here in Washington we're all friends after 6."

But such gestures do have their critics. Hugo Schwyzer argued, just days before the 2014 midterm elections, that, "It's okay to end a friendship over politics." His argument, in brief, suggested that to sidestep political issues in the interest of friendship is to undermine their importance.

Although this makes for a provocative counterpoint to the conventional wisdom, the conventional wisdom likely exists for good reason.

It’s what Biden meant when he said toward the end of the eulogy that “Friendship and death are great equalizers.” We ought to be more than just the pros and cons of the various issues.

It's perhaps what people are starting to wake up to with rumors of a possible 2020 bipartisan “fusion ticket” and an ailing John McCain reaching across the aisle to Biden, encouraging him to stay in politics.

Regardless, Biden’s eulogy for his colleague from South Carolina reminds us that there is a place for friendship, even if there are no politics to agree on.

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