I noticed that Jimmy Cater was asked, during a recent Newsweek interview, whether today’s political climate reminds him of any other time in American history. I found his response discouraging.
“I don’t remember any time in my lifetime when there was this much antagonism and as sharp a division between the political parties or the supporters of the two candidates as there is now. I don’t [think] it’s ever been this way.
“And I don’t think there’s ever been this sharp a partisan division in the Congress, although obviously during slavery times, the abolitionists and those from the pro-slave states were filled with vituperation. But it didn’t carry over to all the ancillary bills on which they were voting. Now almost everything that comes up in Washington, there’s a direct and sharp and sometimes antagonistic partisan division. That’s a new development, and I think it carries over from the negative advertising that has now become a standard ploy in getting elected — a very effective ploy I might add.”
So Carter is drawing a comparison of the political divisions within the country between now and the Civil War era — and he concludes that it’s worse now.
I guess the whole “uniter, not divider” thing hasn’t worked out so well for Bush.