President Obama Takes on Trump and Tribalism – The Daily Beast

Some of the messaging of note in President Obama’s State of the Union address and South Carolina Governor Haley’s response:

The two parties are more polarized than ever before. And at least one stomach-turning poll found that of a majority of millennials don’t think its essential to live in a democracy. No wonder President Obama said combating this cynical, self-defeating drift into disillusion and hyper-partisanship was “maybe the most important thing I want to say tonight.”

In the process, the president took aim at Trump and tribalism, warned against identity politics and offered a three-part prescription for reducing polarization in American politics.

Demagogues have always been the dark side of democracy.  The appeal of a strongman, who promises to solve every problem through brute force, dividing the country into “us” against “them”, was a fear of the founding fathers.  That fear is now embodied by Donald Trump.

The president fired off a few brush-back pitches in The Donald’s direction, an unusual move in a State of the Union. “We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong… When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country.”

This full throated defense of diversity of a source of strength, patriotically name-checking Muslims and mosques, alongside mention of gay rights and marriage equality and an extended conversation about climate change is a reminder of how much President Obama has changed the terms of the debate over the past eight years. And this cultural shift helps fuel the frustrations of conservative populists who want to “take America back.”

Of course, eight years ago it would have been hard to imagine an Indian-American female Governor of South Carolina giving the Republican response to the first black president. Our country is changing, and perhaps not coincidentally Nikki Haley also found time in her speech to implicitly dis Trump. “Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference.”

Haley’s VP audition was a timely reminder that neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice and that good people can disagree civilly in our democracy.  This dovetailed nicely with President Obama’s core caution about the coarseness of our civic debates these days: “Democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic.”

Source: President Obama Takes on Trump and Tribalism – The Daily Beast