[This piece was written in January, 2005. It was broadcast before the second Innauguration of President Bush on KUNM, the NPR station that fairly well covers New Mexico.]

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler

Get over it,” says Bob Novak on TV to people like me who wanted the presidential election to turn out differently. But I haven’t gotten over it—and I don’t think I should.

I agree– it’s a noble American tradition that after the hard-fought campaign, we Americans rally round the duly chosen leader, coming together for the common good. But what should one do if that leader himself does not work toward our common good?

If, after this inauguration, our re-elected president seeks to build upon the values we share, rather than use values to divide us, I will indeed get over it. But that does not look likely. Even when he first came to power with fewer votes than his opponent and in a bitterly disputed election, he did not choose to heal that rift by governing in accordance with those values that unite us. Four years later, the pollsters found an American public more polarized than they’d ever measured before. His way of leading intensified our divisions.

Just as this presidency has sown division between Americans, so also between America and the world. Till now, America was more trusted than any hegemon in history. But even before 9/11, this president had alienated our longtime allies. And since, with his war of choice in Iraq, he has continued losing our friends and multiplying our enemies, while also keeping the ugly picture of continuous bloodshed at the center of the global stage.

This pattern of creating division and strife is no small clue to the moral nature of this leadership. Turning people against each other —rendering the human drama into an Us against a Them—has been the practice of bad rulers throughout history.

When people are focused on their conflicts, they’re unable to build a more whole world based on their common humanity.

When our passions are diverted into quarrelling about divisive, hot-button issues like gay marriage and school prayer, we’re unable to join forces to create the healthier society we all want for future generations. We’re not discussing those questions most vital to a just and humane American future– like how economic values should be weighed against other important values when the two conflict, or what kind of legal structures can best assure the integrity of the democratic process by which we choose our leaders.

When Republicans and Democrats cannot even maintain the civility traditional to our legislative bodies, they’re disabled from working together on the kinds of enduring achievements that made America great.

Likewise in the wider world. For two generations, America led other humane societies in advancing international order—creating structures to maintain peace, to foster the rule of law, to promote the well being of humankind. But this American leadership has systematically undercut such order—from the Kyoto Treaty to the quaint” Geneva Conventions.

It has, indeed, shown contempt for those institutions (like the United Nations) that, though flawed, represented the dreams of great American presidents, who saw them as early steps toward a future in which humankind might achieve a more whole and harmonious way of living together on this earth.

Today’s American leaders have criticized these institutions not to improve them, but to sweep them out of the way of their doing as they please.

Even with our traditional allies, the management of tensions has supplanted any possibility of creative collaboration in building a future based on our deepest common values and interests. While we’re squabbling about Iraq, we aren’t building post-cold-war structures for peace and security, and we aren’t addressing the reality that we’re leaving our descendants a sicker biosphere than we ourselves inherited.

Some Americans see this president as a godly man anointed to lead us at this important time. But the sowing of division is not God’s work. Dividing people is the surest way of preventing them from advancing goodness in this world.

Goodness is about bringing things together, about harmony, about wholeness. Tearing things apart –turning one group against another, displacing cooperation with conflict, shredding structures of good order– manifests a spirit of an altogether different sort.

To my traditionalist religious countrymen who have leant this presidency their support I say: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:20)

And I say, when such a divisive spirit rules our country, we are called not to get over it but to overcome it.