Trump's lust for respect makes national unity implausible
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 6:57 am
http://a.msn.com/r/2/AAlYayz?a=1&m=en-us
The article makes a pretty straight forward argument that national unity is not something that any recent presidents have been capable of, despite the headline that leads the reader to think that Trump will be the only one incapable of it.
The article makes a pretty straight forward argument that national unity is not something that any recent presidents have been capable of, despite the headline that leads the reader to think that Trump will be the only one incapable of it.
But buried in the article is an interesting nugget about Rep John Lewis who has been all over the media recently. His nose is far from clean and I think that is important when some figures describe the guy as pretty much having a halo around his head. That stuff bothers me.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.
The ugly squabble between the president-elect and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) over the weekend offers a glimpse into how bad things will get.
Lewis earned his icon status on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. But over the years, he's traded some of his moral capital for partisan chips, insinuating that only the Democratic Party has ownership of the civil rights era and its victories, despite the fact that a higher share of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats. Indeed, the goons who cracked Lewis' skull on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were acting at the behest of a Democratic governor and Democratic local officials. Even the bridge was named after a Democrat.
In 2008, Lewis saw nothing wrong with comparing Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to the segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, adding: "Sen. McCain and Gov. [Sarah] Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division." He did it again in 2012, insinuating that voting for Mitt Romney might lead America to "go back" to the days of fire hoses, police dogs and church bombings.
This was not idealism, but poisonous cynicism, and it helped contribute to the feelings of resentment that were so essential to Trump's victory. Now, Lewis is going further still, refusing to attend Trump's inauguration and arguing that Trump cannot be a legitimate president because of Russian meddling in the election. Lewis may have reason to believe that Trump did not win fair and square, but questioning Trump's legitimacy is exactly what the Russians probably wanted from the beginning: to undermine Western and American faith and confidence in democracy. (It's a sign of Lewis' partisanship that he also boycotted George W. Bush's first inauguration because he didn't think Bush was legitimate either.)