The Republicans' Game: Paint Obama as a Divider of America

Has Barack Obama, the ex-champion of national unity, become a great divider of the nation? This is what the Republicans are trying to demonstrate, and they are not without arguments.

A Gallup poll has revealed how the Obama presidency has been one of division. This month, Obama has persuaded only eight percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats, a gap of 82 points. Gallup compared this with other presidents who were running for re-election at the same point in the year: the gap is largest for Obama. It is even bigger than that of George W. Bush in 2004 (80 points) and more than Bill Clinton in 1996 (63 points).

Obama has evolved since his first appearance in the media eight years ago. Remember, it was the Democratic convention in 2004. He became a national figure as he uttered these simple words: “[T]here’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Four years later, in 2008, during the Democratic primary and the presidential election, he did not stop projecting a message of unity, based particularly on empathy, his most important value.

Obama 2008: the Candidate for Unity

During this successful campaign, to his interlocutors, Obama cited Abraham Lincoln and made reference to a book that left an impression on him: “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” written by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lincoln chose to put his three main political opponents in his cabinet in the election of 1860.

Thus, confronted with hostile discourse, he could maintain a unity that was being threatened by the Civil War.

In 2008, Obama confided in Joe Klein, a reporter for Time: “I don’t want to have people who just agree with me, he said. “I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.”

At the same time, he went further, saying: “I don’t think the American people are fundamentally ideological. They’re pragmatic … and so I have an interest in casting a wide net, seeking out people with a wide range of expertise, including Republicans.”

Certainly, Obama appointed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but the American president has failed to entice some Republicans, with the exception of Robert Gates, as Secretary of Defense, as they systematically refused proposals, whether public or not. What’s worse, even despite the Democrats, Obama has surrounded himself with loyalists, never separating from advisors that came with him from Chicago, such as Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett.

Obama was not able to work with the Republicans in the Capitol, as they were hostile toward any arrangement with a president that they have never truly accepted. We just need to remember the psychodrama during the raising of the debt ceiling…

For Republicans, Obama Is a Great Divider of the Nation

It’s easy for Republicans to stigmatize a president as a divider — a serious attack if we consider that the president must embody unity. This is a very classic attack used to destabilize a president seeking re-election. One of Mitt Romney’s main advisers, Ed Gillespie, said about Obama, “[He is] one of the most divisive presidents in American history.”

This was after the president, he said, sought to politically exploit the capture of bin Laden.

Last August, in a speech in Chillicothe, Ohio, Mitt Romney summed up the Obama presidency: “Over the last four years, this President has pushed Republicans and Democrats as far apart as they can go. And now he and his allies are pushing us all even further apart by dividing us into groups. He demonizes some. He panders to others. His campaign strategy is to smash America apart and then cobble together 51 percent of the pieces.”

Obama 2012: Divide and Conquer

The Gallup poll for October 2012 shows that the Republicans are right. It is difficult not to see a failure on Obama’s part — who wanted to unify the nation! Should we only blame the Republicans who have refused to work with him?

It is certain that a large part of the Republican electorate has never agreed to have a black person in the Oval Office. Let us recall Obama’s popularity rate after that capture of bin Laden: only 51 percent! Bush would probably have been over 80 percent… It’s as if there is a glass ceiling above the head of the Democratic president.

It’s precisely this glass ceiling that explains why Obama is so largely responsible for the divide that he claimed he wanted to fight in 2008, presenting himself as the president of a reunified country, after two terms under George W. Bush.

Very early, the Obama administration abandoned talk about unification and aimed policy at this or that part of the American population. (But never blacks, this is too risky for him!) The sights were set on November 2012. Above all, the strategy aimed to corner the Republican Party on the right and to take the gamble that in the end, more than 50 percent of Americans would find themselves in this patchwork of policies or highly targeted ads.

Unity for the Second Presidential Debate

Obama is trying to appeal to the gay community (abolition of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and support of gay marriage), the Latino community (DREAM Act) and especially women (particularly when it comes to the question of abortion or equal pay, rejected by the senate), and hopes to rely on their turnout. But that’s not all. The strategy seeks to demonize the Republican Party and make it into an extremist party by causing bad faith through the effects of the tax proposals for the middle class and Romney’s position on abortion.

This is a winning strategy, but has its limits. During the first presidential debate, the Republican candidate had been able to develop a program that was much more moderate than his opponents had portrayed. If Romney manages to pass as the candidate of unity, then Obama has something to worry about…

I bet that Tuesday during the second presidential debate, Obama will seek to guarantee the unity threatened by Romney. This is a clear challenge, and typical for the last three weeks of the campaign.