Should We Unite Behind This (Divisive) President?

Since 9/11 it's been common for people--mostly conservatives--to say (and sometimes insist) that liberals should unite behind Bush for the sake of our efforts against terrorism. I am not immune to such calls. Despite my disgust at the actions of Republicans during the (non-)recount of 2000, I did, in fact, do my very best to get behind the president after 9/11, and I stayed more or less behind him until the deceptions about Iraq became intolerable.

Difficult issues arise here, but I just want to focus on one of them. It's true that there are good reasons to seek some kind of political unity--perhaps always but at least especially now. However conservative calls for unity ring hollow given certain crucial facts. First, calls for unity lose force when the president is so intentionally divisive. Given his intentional divisiveness and extreme partisanship, his demonizing of his opponents, and his tendency to question the patriotism of his critics, his calls for unity seem insincere at best. Since this administration has not only done nothing to create unity but, in fact, gone out of its way to destroy it, it is unclear why we should take their calls for unity seriously.

Second, conservatives could have helped to unify the country by rejecting Bush's bid for re-election. Kerry would obviously be a much less divisive figure than Bush, the most polarizing president in recent memory. Conservatives did not, however, take this route. Consequently, we should, apparently, conclude that they believe that unity is less important than advancing their political agenda. So, again, it is not clear that we should take their calls for unity seriously. They backed their candidate and would, no doubt, have criticized his policies harshly had he won. It is not clear why we are obliged to act differently. In fact (given the nature of the last two elections and the events of the Clinton administration) we have excellent reason to believe that conservatives would criticize a Democratic president more harshly than we have criticized Bush, almost no matter what that hypothetical Democratic president's policies were like.

Finally, if the Bush administration really believes that unity is vitally important, it can easily achieve this by taking a few reasonable steps it should have taken anyway. It can compromise with liberals and Democrats, stop questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with its policies, stop the expansion of executive power, and end polarizing policies such as that of torturing prisoners. The president could also, for example, seek a more moderate appointee for the Supreme Court. His failure to take any of these steps indicates that his calls for unity are, in fact, merely calls to let him have his way.

If the president himself took even a few steps towards compromise and unity, his political opponents might be inclined to take him more seriously, view him more favorably, and do likewise. His refusal to do so, however, reveals that he himself views advancing his domestic political agenda to be more important than national unity in the face of terrorist threats. It is unclear why his political opponents are not entitled to similar views.