Jonah Goldberg writes:
“For many years,” Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon, “our
country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never
change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”
As persuasive as the ALL CAPS are, I have my doubts.
Put aside Trump’s specific shortcomings for the moment. The presidency
has become ill-suited to the task of unifying the country, because the
presidency has become the biggest prize and totem in the culture war.
Like the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in England,
if one side controls the throne, it is seen as an insult and threat to
the other. And whoever holds the throne is seen as a kind of personal
Protector of the Realm.
The political parties have been utterly complicit in the process.
Exploiting social media and other technologies, Republicans and
Democrats shape their messages around the assumption that they — and
they alone — have legitimate ownership of America’s authentic best
self. That’s why whichever party is out of power promises to “take back
America” — as if the other side were foreign invaders.
Barack Obama was elected in 2008 in no small part to fulfill the
promise of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address: to banish
the slicing and dicing of America into Red States and Blue States.
The colors of the electoral map may have been smudged and scrambled
over the last eight years, but the underlying polarization Obama
inherited from George W. Bush only intensified on his watch. Trump will
be the third president in a row to promise to unite the country, and he
will almost certainly be the third in a row to fail.
[ETC]
