Two former Presidents weighed in on the persisting political tensions in the United States and called for harmony on Thursday at separate events.
The 43rd President George W. Bush, making a rare political intervention, and the 44th one Barack Obama, appearing for the first time in a campaign event after he left the White House in January, made similar points — that the American identity is not, and cannot be defined by race or religion.
The speeches were instantly and widely interpreted as a rebuke to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policy that often seeks to capitalise on social divisions, though neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Obama named the 45th President.
Mr. Trump has personally attacked both former Presidents several times during his election campaign last year, and later as President.
“People of every race, religion, and ethnicity can be fully and equally American. It means that bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed,” Mr. Bush said, speaking at event at the George W. Bush Institute in New York.
Mr. Obama, campaigning for the Democratic candidate for the Virginia governor election next month, told a crowd in Virginia that “instead of our politics reflecting our values, we’ve got politics infecting our communities.”
Both former Presidents alluded to the August violence in Charlottesville where a white nationalist rally led to violence and the death of a counter protester.
‘Learn from past’
“We saw what happened in Charlottesville, but we also saw what happened after Charlottesville, when the biggest gatherings of all rejected fear and rejected hate and the decency and goodwill of the American people came out… That’s how we rise. We don’t rise up by repeating the past, we rise up by learning from the past,” said Mr. Obama. He said last year’s divisive presidential campaign had impacted governance.
“If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them. You won’t be able to unite them later if that’s how you start,” Mr. Obama said.
Immigration key
Mr. Bush underscored the importance of immigration to American identity, contradicting Mr. Trump’s politics.
“I am thrilled that friends of ours from Afghanistan, China, North Korea and Venezuela are here as well,” he said of his audience, adding that America had “forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America.”
“Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication… We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together,” he said, adding that “nationalism is distorted into nativism.”
“We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade — forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism,” Mr. Bush said, calling into question another part of Mr. Trump’s politics.
Mr. Obama had said he would wade into politics only when he sees “core values” challenged.
Former presidents usually keep their interventions rare in order to allow the incumbent the space to govern and new leadership to emerge in their own party. An aide of Mr. Obama’s told ABC news that the latter had no plans to get highly active. “He is acutely aware that when he consumes political oxygen, it can stifle the attention that should be on current and emerging leaders in the party,” the aide said.
