On the day that President Ronald Reagan was shot, when he was being wheeled into the operating room, he is said to have turned to the surgical team and said, “I hope you are Republicans”. “Mister President” the surgeon replied, “today the whole nation are Republicans”. The surgeon was correct, on the day that Ronald Reagan was shot, the whole nation were Republicans.
On the day it was revealed that President Trump had the Corona virus, the whole nation were not Republicans. True, most people realized that it does not square with our American sense of common decency to kick a person when they are down, to speak ill of the sick, and, appropriately, negative political ads were suspended, social media sites banned hopes for his worsening, politicians and pundits alike offered him, his family and his associates best wishes for a speedy recovery, which is appropriate, but unlike in the days of Ronald Reagan, the president is sick, but we are far from all being “Republican,” even for the day.
That is sad. How could that have come to be?
If you will permit me to borrow a concept from pop psychology, that of the “emotional bank account” in which a person in a relationship has to add love and support to a greater extent than they take it to keep a positive account, I think we can look, if you will, at our “Unity” account, to see how much “unity” this president has added, compared to how much division he has sown, and ask where the balance may be.
There are many issues, valid issues, over which Americans of good faith might reasonably differ, and differ widely, and yet still not be divided from each other. Still remain unified in seeking a common interest for the country. How have those differences been consistently handled, framed and presented by this administration?
Start with immigration, the President’s first signature issue. Americans of good faith could have had a unifying discussion on how to weigh the rights of American workers to be protected from an influx of people who might offer unfair competition and balance that with our traditional image of ourselves as a beacon of refuge to those who would flee tyranny and throw their lot in with us. We could have balanced, in good faith, and with reasonable discussion in a spirit of consensus, consideration and reconciliation differing points of view. We could have reviewed our respect for the rule of law, our compassion for those in need, and the standard of adherence to precedent in finding a pathway, for example, for DACA recipients. Most importantly we could have sat down like adults of the same unified country and worked out compromises which would not have compromised our basic unity and cohesion as one nation. Did this president encourage us to do that- or did he use an emotional issue to divide us?
We could have found a way to balance a desire both to decrease unwanted pregnancies, to prevent unwelcome births, and also to minimize the frequency of abortion. We may have, through education, discussion, compassion, and understanding found ways as a nation to find and build on common ground. It would have been possible. But the issue can also be used to sew distrust, division, contempt for each other and to introduce lines of permanent separation. Which has this issue been used to do? And by whom?
The same could be said for the second amendment. Americans of good faith could have sat down with each other, over the past several decades since Ronald Reagan was shot, and found acceptable accommodations by which Americans agreed that the second amendment rights could have been protected and yet gun safety regulation could have existed which might have prevented mad men from killing dozens of children at a crack. That could have been done, and done with unity and common understanding and purpose, but not when the passion of the issue is used to divide us. Who has done that?
On issue after issue, concern after concern, it is worth questioning whether the current administration has encouraged us to listen to each other, to hear the other’s concerns and to try to make common cause, seek consensus, and solution and compromise and accommodation, or rather to use differences on issues to split us from each other and to make, rather than “e pluribus unum”, out of many one, rather to split us from one together into two, too divided. And it is fair, I believe, to ask whether one party has, over the past decade, been more likely than the other to use issues to divide rather than unite.
So we come back full circle to the Corona virus, to Covid 19, to the Pandemic. Traditionally it was believed that a common enemy could bring a fractured society together, and that differences between, say, rich and poor, black and white, Democrat and Republican would dissolve, if not completely, then at least be suspended in the face of a common enemy. But somehow, that didn’t happen, not this time. Why not? What could have possibly been a more unifying attack to all of us than a new and unknown deadly illness? How could it not have pulled us together?
But even this shared threat, this common catastrophe was somehow used to tear us apart. How did it became political whether we covered our noses and mouths, washed our hands, kept our distances, and conducted ourselves with respect for each other and for the science? Who encouraged that difference? Who reveled in the divides? The administration shunned masks and social distance, at most paying them lip service while winking at those who ignored them. They belittled those who wore masks, encouraged supporters to flaunt recommendations to do so, undermined and humiliated states which mandated safety measures, (“Liberate Michigan”) and ridiculed the democratic candidates for struggling to model the safest behaviors. So even when confronting the prototype of a unifying threat, one which could have bound us closer together, which should have bound us together, an alien illness, the opportunity to find unity and common ground if only to protect ourselves, that opportunity has been squandered and trampled upon, and the divisions between us all the more encouraged.
So now the President has contracted the Corona virus. And so have his wife, and his counsellor, his press secretary, and many of his political allies, whose lives are now at risk because it seemed somehow politically advantageous to define oneself by distinction from the other side who hid behind their masks and science and safety. All the people who attended his non-distanced, and purposefully non-masked Rose Garden ceremony to introduce his obviously divisive nomination during an actual election when they wouldn’t do their constitutional duty to hear the nominee of another president before an election year – all of those loyal people – their lives, and the lives of their families and close friends are now at risk.
Let me be clear. I do not wish the President ill health, nor his family, nor his confederates. It is not in our American DNA to hope our political adversaries sicken and die, that is not the way we operate, at least with our better angels. But I do trust that his supporters will understand and profit from learning from this distinction.
That while President Reagan’s assassination attempt did indeed, and for some time after ‘make us all Republicans”, President Trumps illness decidedly does not have the same effect.
It is worth asking why.
And worth knowing that it is sad.