CULTURE WARRIOR IN CHIEF

THE MODERN PRESIDENCY IS A DIVIDER, NOT A UNITER. IT HAS BECOME FAR TOO POWERFUL TO BE ANYTHING ELSE.

- GENE HEALY

"WE MUST END this uncivil war that pits red against blue," President Joe Biden implored in his inaugural address, a speech that used the word unity no fewer than 11 times: "Unity is the path forward."

It's a familiar tune, one we were hearing from presidents long before it started to feel like the country was coming apart. "A kinder, gentler nation" was George H.W.

Bush's formulation. "I'm a uniter, not a divider," the rendering of his feckless son. Barack Obama wouldn’t just stop the oceans’ rise; through the sheer power of presidential happy-talk, he’d kumbaya us into “one America,” beyond red and blue. Given the way things have been heading lately, you can’t blame Biden for sounding a bit desperate about it.

Donald Trump, who threw out the old playbook on his path to the presidency, takes a different approach: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country!” “The seal is now broken.” “2024 is our final battle.”

That’s really not helping, but neither would it put us on the glide path to national unity if Trump suddenly mellowed his tone. The former president’s apocalyptic rhetoric and rageaholic antics aren’t what made the presidency itself a central fault line of American polarization. It’s the fact that the president, increasingly, has the power to reshape vast swathes of American life. The modern presidency, by its very nature, is a divider, not a uniter. It has become far too powerful to be anything else.