“YES, I WOULD,” KAMALA HARRIS TOLD CNN without hesitation, when asked last week if she were to appoint a Republican to her cabinet. Why? She said she values ​​diverse opinions, building consensus and finding “a common ground of understanding” to solve problems.

“I think it’s important to have people at the table when important decisions are being made who have different points of view and experiences. And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who is a Republican,” the vice president and Democratic presidential candidate said.

That’s clever, I thought. Then I suddenly remembered a bite column I had written in December 2020 that President-elect Joe Biden should “just say no” to a Republican cabinet secretary. “Most of the party is either in thrall to President Donald Trump or pretending to be, which means most of the party is disqualified” from serving in a Biden Cabinet, I wrote then.

Much has changed since that angry, unyielding piece published on the last day of that fateful year.

We had seen the conservative hijacking of the Supreme Court, the eleven-month GOP Roadblock against Merrick Garland in 2016 to the thirty day rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett a week before the 2020 election that Trump lost. We had seen that Trump sabotage the transition to Biden, threatening national security and the COVID vaccination rollout; his dishonest claim that he won the election; his many failed attempts to prove fraud and “find” votes to support his Big Lie; and his to call to action to his supporters to descend on Washington on January 6 for a “big protest.” “It’s going to be wild,” he said wrote.

Then, in the days after that column was published, came the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6. And Trump’s announcement that he boycott Biden’s inauguration (the first living president in over a hundred and fifty years to refuse to bless the transfer of power). He was impeached again. He has since been criminally prosecuted, four timesAnd convicted ever—until now. And he wants to be president. Again.

Trump, his cronies and his party of invertebrate slime-mongers ushered in an era of political violence and threats, along with a “I really don’t care. Do you?”attitude toward blue states.

It almost goes without saying that Trump has not included any Democrats in his cabinet.

All of this was especially frustrating after President Barack Obama’s remarkable efforts to bridge the gap. He began by nominating an unprecedented three Republicans to his cabinet. One of them, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, was a holdout. Another, Commerce Secretary-designate Judd Gregg, then a senator from New Hampshire, withdrew after nine days.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the third-ranking Republican, did try to act as an envoy for some projects, but GOP obstructionism during the Obama years was huge and historicand not just on Garland’s Supreme Court nomination. Republicans built a wall of resistance to the Affordable Care Act, despite extensive negotiations and the law’s conservative pillars: private insurance and personal responsibility. The GOP-run House later killed an ambitious, bipartisan Senate immigration bill.

Republicans waited for their big chance to triumph in what they and most of their base see as a zero-sum political game: the next GOP president. But it didn’t work out as planned. Trump’s repeated promises to repeal and replace the ACA, fix the immigration system, and build, build, build—like a boastful developer—backfired. racismand, in the case of his fruitless “infrastructure weeks”, into a farce.

Biden, who took power amid Trump’s hostility, lies and sabotage, didn’t put a Republican in his cabinet. And it didn’t matter. He signed a lot two-party laws addressing issues you’d think both parties would want to solve. There were bipartisan bills to improve infrastructure, strengthen the U.S. Postal Service, fix the archaic Electoral Count Act, support Ukraine after the Russian invasion, and take on China by boosting domestic semiconductor chip production. There was also this year’s ambitious bipartisan border bill that Trump told his congressmen to fail to boost his own chances for the White House. Biden would have signed it, and Harris says she would, too.

This wave of bipartisanship under Biden’s leadership materialized only after the GOP rejected Obama’s repeated attempts at compromise and progress, and Trump showed that he was not only largely ineffective and also unique terrible in the art of the deal. A subset of Republicans inclined to address global threats, border issues, and the practical needs of voters eventually came to the table, and they found a willing and experienced negotiating partner in Biden. Harris has seen it all firsthand and is clearly adopting it as a model for campaigning and governing.

Since her first large scale rally As the Democrats’ insta-candidate last month, Harris has framed the race as prosecutor versus criminal. There’s an urgency for her to defeat Trump and see him erased from electoral politics for good. That may be one reason Harris was so quick to pledge to have a Republican in her cabinet. It’s a reassuring move for people who don’t know much about her, or who may be hesitant about voting Democrat.

When Biden took office, that particular brand of inclusivity would have seemed like a reward for the sins of a party that followed its outlaw leader. The timing was all wrong. Now it feels appropriate and realistic. The Democratic National Convention alone showcased several Republicans who, despite the inevitable MAGA backlash, might be open to jobs in a Harris-Walz administration, including Jan Gilesthe mayor of Mesa, Arizona, and Olivia TroyeVice President Mike Pence’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser during the Trump administration.

Faced with an unwavering Republican determination to thwart him, Obama’s presidency never delivered on the promises of his plans. rising speech 2004 about a country not divided into black and white people or blue and red states: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.” Biden, who experienced these disappointments as Obama’s vice president, has tried again, and with greater success. He has worked across the aisle when possible, and his constructive civility has been a balm to the country.

That is his legacy to us and to his own vice president. And Harris shows every sign that she understands it and intends to continue it.