We are in a sad state of affairs when the President of the United States announces plans to speak to school children and everyone’s first reaction is to line up into their requisite partisan camps.
It didn’t help when one of the Department of Education’s recommended activities was for students to write a letter detailing how they could help Obama. Yet even this overreach was not worthy of the paranoia exhibited by the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and other inhabitants of the Land of the Stupid.
Some have argued that they feel the President should not be playing the role of wise sage or moral teacher. There may be a dash of over sized ego in our ubiquitous President, but I am inclined to give him a pass as the contents of the speech are nothing to be alarmed about. We also should keep in mind that much of the public’s desire to elevate the President goes back to the founding of the Republic. It was George Washington who was known as, “His Excellency” and, “the man who unites all hearts.” FDR’s Fireside Chats soothed a nation at war, and there is no shortage of conservatives who have an altar to Reagan above their mantle. Rightly or wrongly, the President carries considerable force and influence in our country.
Partisan debate is often good for a democracy, but hyper-partisan toxicity never is. During the later part of George W. Bush’s term the environment wasn’t that different than what Obama is experiencing: there was nothing Bush could say to avoid being roasted daily by critics.
Abraham Lincoln spoke of how a house divided against itself could not stand – arguing the nation would either condone slavery everywhere or nowhere. I fear the same kind of splintered nation over partisanship. We will either remember the better parts of our Republic, the miracle of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, or continue to slide into jaundiced factions who have little to say to each other; but much to scream.
