“Political animosity has become professionalized,” said Frazier, specifically mentioning talk radio’s ultraconservative Rush Limbaugh, who openly calls for the failure of the Obama presidency.
Fox News host Glenn Beck has called Obama “a racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people.”
The revival of bitter partisanship has built quickly and steadily since the nation united behind Bush in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US. It was quickly discovered that Bush’s rationale for going to war in Iraq — claims that the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons — was untrue and the temporary unity dissolved.
“It’s a hard thing to stop and it is escalating” each time Republicans or Democrats cede power in the capital, said Jack Holmes, political science professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
Is there a way out?
“At a certain point the public well demand an end, say ‘We want this to stop,’” Holmes said. “The public has to demand it and will start judging political leaders accordingly.”
A signal moment arose when Obama came under attack from opponents when he planned an Internet address at the beginning of the school year to encourage students to study hard and stay in school.
He was accused, before the very moderate and apolitical address, of wanting to indoctrinate pupils and students with his alleged “socialist” ideals.
He left the doomsayers with red faces.
Frazier said a return to unity or at least a willingness to compromise can only happen around the president, the country’s most visible and powerful symbol. Given that, he said at first, that he believed a modicum of bipartisanship would only take hold if the US again faced an extraordinary external threat, such as the Sept. 11 attacks.
On reflection, he was more optimistic, but not much: “I don’t think that we are hopelessly stuck in this nasty place. I don’t really think there is anything we can do, but I do think it’s possible that the nastiness will run its course.”
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