In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden used the word “unity” eight times. Unity has been a consistent theme with him since the days of his presidential campaign, when he frequently spoke of his intent to bring Americans together. Politicians often tout the virtues of unity, but Biden’s message took on special resonance during the Trump years. The former president’s willingness to lean into divisiveness as a political strategy—even, it sometimes seemed, as a form of recreation—made Biden’s call for unity a marked, and ultimately winning, contrast to Trump.
As compelling as the idea of unity is, however, the reality of political division is hard to escape. Division has been a constant in our politics since the country’s earliest days. Accepting, then, that there will always be many sides to the American story, the question becomes: which side is public health on? We aspire to improve health by shoring up the socioeconomic foundations of our country and world. At the policy level, this means a stronger social safety net, regulation of harmful influences like guns, and laws which help redress historic injustice. At present, such policies tend to overlap with the goals of the political left. There are times, of course, when such goals are embraced by the right—as, for example, with the Trump administration’s work on criminal justice reform. And there are legitimate conservative approaches to the issues public health tackles. But, broadly speaking, public health is aligned with the left, and there is no sense dancing around this.
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