Bush and Obama: Uniters, Not Dividers??

Photo courtesy of state.gov.

On May 6, 1999, Salon published an article by David Horowitz featuring his interview of presidential candidate George W. Bush. Horowitz began by stating:

I like George Bush. He has a strong set of core convictions, including a significant religious faith, but he is also genuinely tolerant, open and warm-hearted toward people with whom he disagrees.

In the course of the interview Bush, former governor of Texas, declared:

...I showed the people of Texas that I'm a uniter, not a divider. I refuse to play the politics of putting people into groups and pitting one group against another.

Later on, Bush answers a question about his attitude toward minority groups, including homosexuals:

I think that each person ought to be judged by their heart and by their soul and by their contribution to society. Group-thought will balkanize our society, and I have rejected the politics of pitting one group of persons against another.

Now compare Bush’s remarks on bipartisanship to the words of candidate Barack Obama in 2008 as reported by the NPR’s Mara Liasson:

Obama has made this bridging of partisan divisions the touchstone of his campaign. "My goal is to get us out of this polarizing debate, where we're always trying to score cheap political points, and actually get things done," he has said.

Obama presents himself as a post-partisan political leader. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, he said that he just wants to do what works for the American people.

"Both at the state legislative level and at the federal legislative level, I have always been able to work together with Republicans to find compromise and to find common ground," he said.

A little over a year after President Bush took office, The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Derrick DePledge wrote:

WASHINGTON — President Bush promised to change the tone of politics and work as closely as possible with Democrats, but he has shown in his first few months in the White House that his commitment is to the conservative public policy agenda he outlined during his election campaign.

In Congress, the theory that leaders of the two political parties would have to find common ground because of the slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate has also largely crumbled, especially in the House, where conservatives have quickly moved to enact tax and regulatory proposals that would have withered under President Clinton.

The climate, for many lawmakers, is as partisan as ever.

And so it went throughout Bush’s eight years in office.

In April 2009, the Pew Research Center reported its startling poll numbers for President Obama:

For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama's job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president -- 88% job approval among Democrats -- and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%).

And the trend continues; on the eve of his first anniversary as president, the latest polls show that although 83% of Democrats continue to approve of Obama, only 14% of Republicans do. One cannot avoid recalling that as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Hillary Clinton was labeled by both the fringes on the left and the right as too polarizing to be president. The same poll cited above shows Secretary of State Clinton with a 75% job approval rating by supporters from both major parties and independents.