Finding common ground is possible if a leader works at it.
The Dallas Morning News is publishing a multipart series on important issues for voters to consider as they choose a president this year. This is the third installment of our What’s at Stake series, and it focuses on presidential leadership. Find the full series here.
Our country faces wide gulfs today along partisan, ideological, geographical and racial boundaries. Recent gaps between Republicans and Democrats on approval ratings for President Donald Trump expose the largest schism in polling history: nearly a 90% difference between partisan views of his presidency. Sometimes it seems as if red and blue America will never turn purple, unless it results from holding our collective breath over what new disasters — natural, viral, economic or civic — could befall our beloved country.
In despair, we might believe that the present is the worst of times, in contrast to some bygone era of good feelings. The United States did experience one of those golden decades in the aftermath of the War of 1812, when conflict between our first two parties ended with the Federalists’ demise and the Democratic-Republicans’ ascendancy. Such a Pax Americana is rare, however, and our politics have most often been marked by everything from cataclysmic division over first principles to less seismic intraparty policy squabbles.
At the recent virtual Democratic National Convention, John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, and his grandson, Jack Schlossberg, offered a tribute to the former president. They cited the 60th anniversary of his New Frontier acceptance speech at the 1960 convention.
“The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises,” the young Massachusetts senator declared. “It is a set of…”
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