President Bush was solidly reelected last week, winning 31 states worth 286 electoral votes. Even more tellingly, he won 51% of popular vote, once and for all crushing the liberal myth that he is an illegitimate president (though it is certain that some bitter liberals will continue to console themselves with this lie).
President Bush became the first presidential candidate since his father (all the way back in 1988) to win a majority of the popular vote – a feat that Bill Clinton (allegedly a uniter) never accomplished. Given this fact, one begins to wonder if America is really so divided after all.
Obviously reasonable Americans can and do disagree on certain issues, such as gay marriage or the war in Iraq. This is just a part of the political process. Americans have always had diverse opinions on controversial issues, yet we tend to think we are more divided now than ever before. But is this really true? If we are so divided, how can President Bush, the man supposedly responsible for dividing us, be able to win a majority of the vote? Undeniably, it is hard to believe a great divider could accomplish such an achievement. Therefore, we must ask ourselves if Bush really is such a divisive figure.
What exactly does Bush divide us on? One issues his critics claim is responsible for division is the war in Iraq. When he launched the war, more than 60% of Americans supported his decision. While that support has dwindled a bit today, it is hard to deny that most Americans were united in their desire to see Saddam Hussein removed from power. Overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress voted to authorize the war. How is this divisive?
Gay marriage is another issue on which Bush supposedly divides America. Yet, if America is divided on this issue, it is hardly an even division. Amendments to state constitutions defining marriage as between one man and one woman passed easily everywhere they were voted on. The merits of gay marriage can certainly be debated, but to say it evenly divides America is misleading at best. Most Americans oppose it. What’s more, Bush has recently endorsed civil unions, which is hardly an anti-gay position.
Abortion is a topic that truly does split America, but it is also a topic that Bush has avoided. In fact, many of his supporters feel Bush has not done enough on the subject of abortion. While he did sign a bill banning partial birth abortion (a procedure 70% of Americans oppose), he has done little otherwise. He has hardly played this as a wedge issue.
So is America divided? The answer is “yes” – but not in the way most people think. In reality, it is the media elites who have divided themselves from the people of Middle America (or “flyover country” as they are sometimes disparagingly referred to), and have tried to divide America itself. The media have tried very hard to divide this nation, effectively campaigning for John Kerry. They have used such tactics as bogus documents and obviously erroneous exit polls (which showed the exact opposite of what actually happened). They have attempted to convince us that the economy is in shambles, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. They have tried to portray the war in Iraq as another Vietnam, again, with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It is they who try to divide America, not President Bush. They do so because they wanted Bush out of office, and felt dividing the country was the best way to get him defeated. Ultimately, they failed on both counts: America is not divided, and President Bush was not defeated.
America is no more divided today than it was eight years ago when Bill Clinton was president. Back then, we had a handful of conservatives so caught up in their hatred of Clinton they lost all rationality. Today, we have a somewhat larger group of liberals (Michael Moore, George Soros, and Al Gore being prime examples) who have similarly lost their rationality due to an illogical hatred of President Bush. This is not unexpected in the partisan world we live in, but to say this means we are a “deeply divided country” is an extreme exaggeration.
John Brown (www.johnnorrisbrown.com) is a senior in political science and history at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. Contact him at johnnyb325@aol.com. This column originally appeared in the November 9, 2004 edition of The Daily Beacon entitled "Division in America questioned", available here.