One nation divided by a president
Elections are partisan; they are politics by division. We choose sides in elections. For most of our history, the choice has been a binary one – the Democratic side or the Republican side.
A Gallup poll released on Thursday shows just how divided, by party, we are: an overwhelming 95% of Republicans and just 3% of Democrats think Donald Trump is doing a fine job as president.
According to Gallup, “This is the first time a president’s approval rating has shown a party gap in excess of 90 percentage points in a single Gallup poll. No president prior to Trump had a party gap higher than 86 points.”
Almost as an aside, Gallup found that 41% of those expressing no party preference – independents – thought the president was up to the job.
In contrast, the final Gallup poll of the 2012 campaign between President Barack Obama and the GOP’s Mitt Romney found Obama was supported by 51% of independents.
Is it telling that the president who came closest, statistically at least by Gallup’s reckoning, to dividing America by party, was his immediate predecessor? The answer is yes. To be fair, however, Obama never deliberately baited Republicans, never called a Republican a traitor, never asked the Justice Department to indict a Republican political opponent, never said his Republican foes were trying to rig elections – all charges Trump has laid on Biden, Obama and other Democrats.
In these and in other ways, President Trump has pursued a political strategy of divide and conquer. Statistics aside, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the strategy is working, though maybe not necessarily to the president’s advantage and certainly not to the country’s.
I’ve heard from one supporter of the president about “creepy” Joe Biden and a video which “shows” the Democrat for president pawing, in public and in front of their families no less, young girls. The validity of the video is anyone’s guess, but I have my doubts.
I’ve also been sent prayers, ostensibly nonpartisan which note that for Catholics, abortion is “the preeminent moral issue” because it is the only issue involving the “taking of innocent life.”
The email’s prayful wish – that voters be safe and that their “votes be counted accurately and with the utmost integrity” – sounds suspiciously like a Trump campaign line, though a politely put one.
I’m reminded of the pro-Trump yard signs which proclaim that “Trump loves Jesus.”
Division by religion can get ugly in a hurry.
In contrast, Joe Biden has done nothing to exacerbate the divisions that threaten to tear America apart under Donald Trump; in fact, Biden has been the epitome of conciliation during the campaign; his campaign, like his career, has reflected a desire to bring people together.
Biden pretty much wants to solve problems; Trump wants to play with them for political advantage.
Am I wrong?
Consider the audio released this week of Jared Kushner’s conversation with reporter Bob Woodward in the spring. Kushner is the president’s son-in-law and a top aide, the de facto White House chief of staff.
The topic was the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, including testing for the disease, which health experts then and now are saying is central to the control of the contagion.
“The states have to own the testing,” Kushner told Woodward. “The federal government should not own the testing.”
He went on: “But the president also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors to basically say, no, no, no, no, I own the opening. Because again, the opening is going to be very popular. People want this country open. But if it opens in the wrong way, the question will be, did the governors follow the guidelines we set out or not?”
Smart? Actually, it was pretty dumb. Besides which, the decision to saddle governors with the primary responsibility for mitigating the pandemic was a clear evasion of presidential purpose, which is to address our most urgent national needs.
Presidents are hired to solve problems, not to create them. Presidents sometimes fail. We understand that. But they should fail trying.
Donald Trump didn’t even try.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His most recent book “JFK Rising” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.