The Faux Bipartisan Unity at John McCain’s Funeral

[EasyAce]

Presenting a false façade of unity where none has existed for decades only plays into populist hands.
By Ben Shapiro
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/bipartisan-unity-john-mccains-funeral-fake/

. . . (I)t wasn’t much of a surprise when speaker after speaker at McCain’s funeral used the occasion to carve into Trump. McCain’s daughter, Meghan, stated, “We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.” These were the words of an aggrieved daughter; on that basis alone, they’re understandable.

But the same wasn’t true for the attacks on Trump by former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bush stated, “John McCain would insist we are better than this. America is better than this.” Obama explained, “Trafficking in bombastic manufactured outrage, it’s politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear.” The political world fawned over video of Bush handing a piece of candy to Michelle Obama.

Here’s the problem: This mythology from both Bush and Obama about the Good Old Days™ of American politics represents revisionist history at its finest. Trump is a symptom of our broken politics; he is not, in fact, its progenitor . . .

. . . For those of us who have watched politics for the past several decades, pinning the death of a common American ethos on Trump is like blaming gravity for the Hindenburg disaster: It had something to do with the problem, but the bigger problem was the enormous fire ripping through the dirigible. George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not have a common vision for America. Neither did George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. What’s more, the hobnobbing and backslapping of these supposed representatives of sharply varying philosophies — the notion that an elite class of political actors were playacting their conflict in public, but smoking cigars together in private — led to the rise of an outsider such as Trump . . .

. . . We are disunited. Trump is a symptom of that. If political actors want to criticize the specifics of Trump’s philosophy, or if they want to criticize Trump’s character overtly, they should have at it. But presenting a false façade of unity where none has existed for decades only leads Americans to believe that the political elites are united by their elite status. And ironically, that plays directly into Trump’s populist hands.