American politics have been vibrant, vehement and often vitriolic since the nation’s founding.
In the mid-1850s, the national mood deteriorated disastrously into the Civil War over the question of slavery and secession. A hundred years later, unresolved conflicts over race relations and U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam combined to generate dangerous new political divisions in American society, with each side claiming the moral high ground.
The ebb and flow of American politics resumed in subsequent decades. The September 11 attacks brought several years of national unity against a foreign terrorist threat, even as periodic social and economic crises continued to simmer. More recently, traditional partisan infighting was joined by the technological escalation of Cold War-era interference from geopolitical enemies of the U.S.-led international order.
With heated, self-interested rhetoric from the political parties, and the complicity of sensationalist and partisan media, Americans increasingly have come to see one another as permanent political enemies rather than as members of a national family with occasional differences on evolving issues.
Both Democrats and Republicans perceive “threats to democracy” in the current political climate, but they tend to see them as emanating entirely from the demonized other side, with their own party bearing little responsibility.
In 2016, Donald Trump seized the opportunity, more viscerally, recklessly and effectively than other equally ambitious political figures. His purpose was not to heal our wounds but to deepen them, not to reunite the country but to further intensify our political discord, feeding the urge among many Americans for political vengeance against real and imagined domestic threats. As the events of Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated, many saw the very existence of the republic at stake, justifying the resort to extreme measures, with some advocating violence and “a new civil war.”
On the other side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have further bred cynicism toward national institutions by expressing their disdain for millions of Americans who long for a more conservative approach to politics and policy.
Clinton called those fellow citizens “a basket of deplorables.”
Said Obama: “[T]hey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Biden, typically, painted with a broad brush of exaggeration. “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
What’s more, his condemnation seemingly applied to all Republicans. “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election — either they win or they were cheated.”
Last week, some rays of political sunshine pierced through the clouds of gloom and danger, when National Public Radio broadcast the July meeting of the National Governors Association in Atlantic City. It was focused on problem-solving, not power-seeking or score-settling.
The new chair, Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, lauded his predecessor’s bipartisanship and noted the national malaise. Stating then that governors are often seen as “the last adults left in the room in politics,” he invited his colleagues to lead by example in demonstrating “healthy disagreement.”
“Whatever your issue is, I’m here to tell you we cannot solve that issue if we remain as divided as we are today. I believe this issue of toxic division, of unhealthy conflict, rises above all the other issues,” he said. “Politicians have been giving Americans permission to hate each other. It’s up to us to give Americans permission to care for each other again.”
“We can disagree without hating each other,” he continued. “[T]he NGA works because we […] get to know each other as human beings first and as politicians second. And we need more of that in our country today.”
His speech evoked Ronald Reagan’s famous quote: “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is an 80 percent friend and not a 20 percent enemy.”
With his Democratic Vice-Chair, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Cox launched a national Disagree Better campaign to encourage the civil expression of legitimate political differences. The runup to the 2024 election is the perfect time for such a healing effort.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA