COVINGTON, Ky. — President Joe Biden delivered a celebration of bipartisan achievement alongside the Senate’s top Republican on Wednesday, even as House Republicans continued their chaotic debate over who can best wage partisan warfare against his administration.
Standing in front of the Ohio River, the president joined Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, and an improbable mix of political rivals to highlight new funding for the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Covington, Kentucky, to Cincinnati. The rare joint appearance is an effort by the White House to begin 2023 by focusing voter attention on instances of bipartisan agreement during Biden’s first two years in office.
“I wanted to start off the new year with this historic project here in Ohio, Kentucky, with a bipartisan group of officials, because I believe it sends an important message, an important message to the entire country,” Biden said in front of the bridge, which is a vivid symbol of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
“We can work together,” he said. “We can get things done. We can move the nation forward if we drop our egos a little bit and focus on what is needed in the country.”
It was only because of McConnell, the president said, that federal bridge funding was secured. Biden called McConnell “my friend and colleague of many years” and downplayed the political clashes they had during the first two years of his presidency.
“Leader McConnell and I don’t agree on everything,” Biden said. “In fact, we disagree on a lot of things. But here’s what matters: He’s a man of his word. When he gives you his word, you can take it to the bank, you can count on it, and he’s willing to find common ground to get things done for the country.”
The appearance by both men offered a remarkable split-screen moment.
In Washington, the House leadership spectacle continued into a second day Wednesday, underscoring the reality of what divided government has wrought. Rep. Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly failed to win election as speaker thanks to a small group of about 20 conservative hard-liners who accuse him of being insufficiently aggressive in opposition to Biden’s presidency and his party’s agenda. The House remained in a leaderless limbo after McCarthy lost three consecutive votes Tuesday for the top job, the first time that has happened in a century. He lost another vote Wednesday.
For Biden, the contrast is convenient.
On his way to Kentucky, the president called the episode an embarrassment for House Republicans with “the rest of the world” looking on. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden said the fight over who serves as speaker was “not my problem,” but he pressed the contrast between his bipartisan event and the Republican infighting in the House.
“How do you think this looks to the rest of the world?” Biden mused about the Republican discord, which the House chaplain referred to charitably Wednesday as the “days of uncertainty.”
McCarthy continued to scrounge for votes as Biden and McConnell arrived in Kentucky for their display of bipartisan bridge-building, standing in front of “Building a Better America” signs with a red and white riverboat floating in the background. Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, a Democrat, and Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, were there. So were Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and former Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican.
The senators and governors from the two parties gushed about one another, hailing the cooperative spirit that got the new bridge funded.
Beshear crowed about “what’s possible when we push partisanship aside.” DeWine urged Americans to “let our new bridge serve as an example of how we can come together.” Portman called the event a “triumph of common sense and persistence over pessimism and partisanship,” while Brown said it was an example of “bipartisanship in the United States of America.”
McConnell praised Biden for signing the infrastructure measure into law and noted the divisions in the nation’s capital.
“We all know these are really partisan times,” the senator said. “But I always feel no matter who gets elected, once it’s all over, we ought to look for things we can agree on and try to do those, even while we have big differences on other things.”
The Brent Spence Bridge has been in need of an upgrade for decades. Led by Biden, lawmakers from both parties, including McConnell, voted last year to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to fix the bridge and others like it in communities across the country.
Despite that recent history, few people in the White House or on Capitol Hill think there is much hope for significant new compromise in the coming two years. As of this week, Congress is once again officially divided, with Democrats still barely in control of the Senate and Republicans holding a new — but tiny — majority in the House.
The event had been planned before this week’s Republican meltdown in the House. But Biden’s advisers said the appearance was an opportunity for the president, who says he intends to run for reelection, to underscore a theme he used in his successful 2020 bid: that he remains determined to reach across the aisle, even if some Republicans, especially in the House, are unlikely to reciprocate.
White House officials declined to say whether Biden had personally talked to McConnell about attending Wednesday’s event. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said only that “our team was consistently engaging with the bipartisan leadership” on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks as the trip was planned.
Aides to McConnell said there was little debate inside his office about whether to attend. The senator has been a longtime supporter of new money for the bridge, which has been a key priority for politicians from Kentucky and Ohio for decades.
Still, McConnell has opposed much of the president’s agenda, once promising supporters that he would be “100% focused” on preventing Biden from putting his desired policies in place. McConnell successfully helped block the president’s bigger, $2 trillion “Build Back Better” spending bill.
In response, Biden quipped at a news conference last year that the question to McConnell after his obstruction should be, “What’s he for?”
But the recent sniping between the veteran politicians understates their complicated relationship. Despite their political differences, the two men have hammered out compromises several times over the years, sometimes to the dismay of members of their own parties.
In 2011, when Biden was vice president, former President Barack Obama turned to him to help cut a deal with Republicans on the budget and the debt ceiling to avert an economic catastrophe. It was McConnell who worked with Biden to sidestep disaster. They worked on a budget compromise again at the end of 2012.
Even if Biden and McConnell can reach a similar deal again, it is unlikely that a Republican-controlled House, under McCarthy or someone else, will do the same.
But for the moment, White House officials are betting that the bridge event and other similar trips planned for the coming weeks will send the message that Biden is trying. On Wednesday, other administration officials will travel to Chicago; New London, Connecticut; and San Francisco to highlight other bridges that will be repaired with money from the bipartisan legislation.
The Brent Spence Bridge, a double-decker built nearly 60 years ago, has been a bottleneck in the region’s economy for years, frustrating commuters, hampering the delivery of goods and services, and threatening to become the site of the latest deadly infrastructure disaster.
The legislation will provide about $1.6 billion to renovate the bridge and construct a second crossing over the Ohio River. Political leaders in the area have tried for years to secure federal funding, to no avail. At a campaign rally in 2020, former President Donald Trump vowed to get money for the bridge, although his promises for “infrastructure week” in America never materialized.
As recently as the end of 2021, the future of the bridge was uncertain as debate about the legislation continued to churn. But during an event in Kentucky, McConnell expressed optimism.
“This’ll be the first time I’ve come up here in a quarter of a century when I thought maybe there was a way forward on the Brent Spence Bridge,” he said at the time.
More than a year later, McConnell stood next to a Democratic president to announce that the bridge will finally be fixed.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .