“WE MUST END this uncivil war that pits red against blue,” President Joe Biden implored in hisinaugural address, a speech that used the word unity no fewer than 11 times: “Unity is the path forward.” It’s a familiar tune, one we were hearing from presidents long before it started to feel like the country was coming apart. “A kinder, gentler nation” was George H.W. Bush’s formulation. “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” the rendering of his feckless
son. Barack Obama wouldn’t just stop the oceans’ rise; through the sheer power of presidential happy-talk, he’d kumbaya us into “one America,” beyond red and blue. Given the way things have been heading lately, you can’t blame Biden for sounding a bit desperate about it.
Donald Trump, who threw out the old playbook on his path to the presidency, takes a different approach: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country!” “The seal is now broken.” “2024 is our final battle.”
That’s really not helping, but neither would it put us on the glide path to national unity if Trump suddenly mellowed his tone. The former president’s apocalyptic rhetoric and rageaholic antics aren’t what made the presidency itself a central fault line of American polarization. It’s the fact that the president, increasingly, has the power to reshape vast swathes of American life. The modern presidency, by its very nature, is a divider, not a uniter. It has become far too powerful to be anything else.
Over the past several decades, as our politics took on a quasi- religious fervor, we’ve been running a dangerous experiment: concentrating vast new powers in the executive branch, making “the most powerful office in the world” even more powerful. Fundamental questions of governance that used to be left to Congress, the states, or the people are now settled, winner-take-all, by whichever party manages to seize the presidency.
Worse still, recent presidents have deployed their enhanced powers to impose forced settlements on highly contested, morally charged issues on which Americans should be free to disagree. In the age of identity politics, the modern president has become our culture warrior in chief. Unless and until he’s disarmed, we’ll have “uncivil war” and American carnage from here to the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
