George W. Bush on 9/11: A Message of Unity; Have We Forgotten?

I still remember my shock when I drove by the Pentagon, smashed on 9/11, only a few miles from my childhood home. Today, on the anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terror attacks against the United States, let us look once again, with the perspective of history, to remember the statement that President George W. Bush made at the end of his brief epideictic speech on the evening of that terrible day. The message resonates to this day. It was a message of unity. His message was that all Americans must unite to do what is right. It is a message we have forgotten. In our increasingly contentious age, this is a lesson we must remember above all others.

“This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.”

Yes, President Bush promised to hunt down the terrorists and their sponsors with all the might that he could muster. Vengeance was not, however, his closing message. The ultimate goal for which he spoke was not to destroy his enemies, but to work for “justice and peace.” His announced goal was not to destroy, but “to defend freedom.” He talked about what was “good and just in our world.”

Most important, however, was his assurance of national unity: “This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace.”

In other words, to triumph, we must work together. Yes, soon after, President Bush made terrible mistakes as he responded to 9/11 with ideological violence. The invasion of Iraq failed to uncover any trace of the supposed weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Afghanistan ended only after seemingly endless decades of miserable failure under one president after another. More innocent people died during the War on Terror than on 9/11. Bush’s nation-building exercises in western Asia left the world as insecure as ever. Indeed, Bush’s foreign policy was a case study in impulsive decision-making. 

Pentagon after 9/11 attack

None of that belies the wisdom of what Bush said the evening of the attacks. He called for unity. He spoke for “justice and peace.” Yes, in the months and years that followed 9/11, the cold light of reality failed to illuminate Bush's subsequent ill-considered decisions. Yes, reality indeed won out. It always does. Let us not, however, ignore the vision. Some people today say they want to “make America great again.” We can only do that if we remember our values. So, as we try to learn from the mistakes of the past, let us also affirm and celebrate our values. Even if we sometimes forget those values, it is never too late to look back and recover them. We need to do so today. Justice, peace, and freedom. We cannot have one unless we have all three.

Of course, let us never forget the courageous 9/11 rescue workers who sacrificed their lives when they ran toward danger while everyone else fled. 

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President George W. Bush’s “9/11 Address to the Nation:” An Appeal for Unity

George W. Bush and the American Vision

George W. Bush and the American Vision, Part 2

George W. Bush Used His Prestige to Call Out the January 6 Terrorists

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Research note: The reader who wishes to understand the tragic failures of 9/11 and the War on Terror might start with Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, and Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq. 

Images: George W. Bush, White House photo; Pentagon, FBI photo via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was More Divisive? Biden, or Trump?

Donald Trump

Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech about the “Soul of America.” He said that the people who he called “MAGA Republicans” were dangerous and did not respect our Constitution. He assured the nation that MAGA Republicans were only a small fraction of the entire party. The press called his speech divisive. Well, fine.

Let us, however, look at Donald Trump’s subsequent September 3, 2022 rally speech in Pennsylvania. Trump engaged in name-calling, called his opponents “crazy,” “evil” and tyrannical, and said that Democrats hate America. Was Trump’s speech as divisive as Biden’s? More divisive? And why did Biden’s seemingly milder divisiveness bother us more?

The issue is more complex than a person might think. If the history of rhetoric teaches us anything, it is that divisive speeches are not always bad. History also teaches us, however, that divisive speeches always irritate people. Nevertheless, one is struck by the observation that there is so much more anger about Biden’s moderately divisive speech than there is about Trump’s rally speech. Why is that? What happened? What did Trump say?


Name-Calling

My mother often told me that I can’t build myself up by running other people down. Yet, that was what Trump tried to do. Early in his speech, Trump referred to Democratic congressional leader Adam Schiff as “Shifty Schiff.” He also called him “Watermelon Head:”

“So when they lost, Hillary Clinton and her people, guys like Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, watermelon head. Watermelon Head, he’s a watermelon head, but no dummy.”

In other words, Trump used language that would not be accepted in a properly-supervised elementary school lunchroom. A simple question for my readers: was that a unifying thing for Trump to say? Or was it divisive? Did Biden, at any point in his “Soul of America” speech, engage in that kind of juvenile name-calling? Obviously not.

Trump also targeted Biden with name-calling. Echoing Stalinist language, Trump called Biden an “enemy of the state:”

“He's an enemy of the state, you know that? The enemy of the state is him and the group that control him, which is circling around him, ‘Do this. do that Joe, you’re going to do this Joe.’”

Even if Biden is in fact, an enemy of the state, isn’t that a divisive thing to call him?


Vilified Democrats

Trump wasn’t finished. He assured his audience that MAGA were good people. He contrasted them with Democrats, who Trump called evil people:

“Think of this, think how bad they are, think how evil they are. We’re all [unclear…] fathers, and your mothers and your children are great people, and all of the people are represented here—think how bad they are.”

Now, yes, Biden did say some bad things about MAGA Republicans. However, if it was divisive to say that MAGA voters do not respect the United States Constitution, is it not also divisive for Trump to say that Democrats are evil? I am not at this moment commenting about who is and is not evil. I’m just pointing out that it is divisive to call people evil. Isn’t it?

In the next breath, Trump lambasted his unnamed enemies from making unnamed false charges against him. My best guess is that Trump was complaining about reports concerning his relationship with Russia. He accused his opponents of lying:

“They make up a story that’s false. It’s now been admitted to be false. The FBI is the last one to tell us that. But it’s now admitted even in the newspapers, even by the people back there, they will not fight it. They make up now think of this or think of this.”

Now, again, regardless of whether Trump’s accusation is true or false--is that not a divisive thing to say?

Later in the speech, Trump called his opponents “unelected tyrants.” He said they were “corrupt” and complained about the “willing and very corrupt media:”

“But this battle is not about me. This is a struggle for the very fate of our republic. Our movement is fighting against a corrupt group of unelected tyrants who believe they can wield absolute power over you, with the help of a willing and very corrupt media.”

Still later in the speech, Trump debated briefly as to whether his opponents were stupid or crazy, concluding that they were crazy:

“These people are crazy, this figure. I mean, they honestly, they can’t be stupid. They must hate our country. They must hate our country. They surrendered our strength and our wisdom, our everything. They turned Afghanistan into the greatest humiliation our country has ever seen. I believe it was the most humiliating thing, time that our country’s ever gone through.”

“Crazy,” Trump said. His opponents “must hate our country.”

Again, in this post, I am not talking about whether Trump does or does not have any legitimate grievances. My point is that he was divisive. Wasn’t he?

And yet, press and public reaction has been far more hostile toward Biden’s divisive speech than toward Trump’s rally speech. Why is that?


Is There an Explanation?

All rhetoric ultimately comes down, in one way or another, to the audience’s interpretation. Sometimes the audience reacts immediately; Sometimes the reaction is delayed by a few days; sometimes the main reaction comes years later. Maybe Donald Trump was speaking to his core supporters for immediate political purposes. Maybe President Biden was speaking for history. Who knows?

First, is it a president’s main job to be unifying? Certainly, to be unifying is important. At the same time, leaders can’t always pander to the immediate crowd. It’s good to be unifying; but it is more important to be a leader.

Second, do we expect more from President Joe Biden then we do from former president Donald Trump? Perhaps we have become so used to Trump’s childish behavior that we brush it off. Yet, we expect President Biden to be stoic in the face of all adversity. Is that realistic?

Third, reporters face pressure to look at both sides of controversial issues. As the Republican Party becomes less and less hinged to reality, the press struggles to find merit to both sides. They seek out people to represent often-ridiculous opinions so they can appear unbiased. Sometimes, unfortunately, the press goes overboard, and, in this case, they are holding Biden to a standard far higher than what they expect from his opponents. Is that right? The question is not as easy to answer as one might think. Ultimately, however, the job of a free press is to report truth. That becomes difficult when much of a political party—the group that Biden called “MAGA Republicans”—disdains ordinary expertise and factual analysis. Seriously, is it presidential to call a political leader “Watermelon Head?” How do we bothsides that?

It isn’t just the press, however, that has a double standard. Former President Trump’s relentless name-calling and bursts of rage have worn us all down. The public has worn down. We are numb. We hardly notice when Donald Trump says something rude, foul, or dishonest. We have come to think that Trump’s behavior is normal. We expect him to be foul. Yet, we still expect calm perfection from President Biden.

That reaction disturbs me. It is as if everyone knows that President Biden holds himself to a high standard, but Donald Trump does not. Instead of concluding that there is something wrong with Trump, or something good about Biden, we try to weigh the two men on an equal scale. Can that be right?


Conclusion

Donald Trump's rally speech was at least as divisive as Biden's “Soul of America” speech. Nevertheless, public reaction to Biden’s speech was rather negative in comparison. That does not really tell us much about Biden versus Trump. The reaction tells us more about ourselves. Evidently, most of us recognize, at least deep inside, that Biden is the better person. Yet, we do not compare Biden against Trump. Instead, we compare our idealized vision of Biden against the real-world Biden. People excuse Trump because “he’s just being Trump.” Thinking that way is normal. It’s human nature. It is, nevertheless, a dangerous way to think. Is it not?

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Earlier post about Trump's rally speech:

Harpine's Thoughts about Public Speaking: Trump Blames Immigrants for America's Problems. Well, What Else Would He Say?

Post about Biden's "Soul of America" Speech:

Harpine's Thoughts about Public Speaking: Biden on the Soul of America: Was He Unifying or Divisive? Or Both?

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Research note: Several theories of social psychology offer insight into this phenomenon. Social Judgment Theory, developed by Carolyn Sherif, Muzafer Sherif, Carl Hovland, and my University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana professor Roger Nebergall, shows us how we make judgments according to our evaluations of people’s character and experience, with reference to our own experience and judgments. We humans, unfortunately, are not always rational when we respond to persuasive messages.

With respect to audience, the rhetorical theorists Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca explain that the audience listening to a speech is not necessarily the audience that matters. Instead, the speaker might have in mind an entirely different audience—maybe future listeners who will hear about the speech, maybe a universal audience, maybe an audience that hears the speech on radio and television, or whatever. So, when I say that Biden’s real audience might not have been the group gathered to listen to his speech, the point is that he was reaching out particularly to the group that he thought of as MAGA Republicans, or, maybe, to his own core supporters who wanted him to show strength. Similarly, Trump may have been reaching out to his national audience, not just his rally crowd. 

Image: Official White House photo  

Trump Blames Immigrants for America's Problems. Well, What Else Would He Say?

Hatred of others has long been conservative rhetoric’s essence. It worked for Hitler. It worked for George Wallace. It’s working for Donald Trump.

At yesterday’s political rally speech in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump, while rambling from one topic to the next, returned over and over to immigration. It was immigrants, he said, who cause America’s problems. It was the Democratic Party’s love of immigrants, he said, that disqualifies them for public office. Us versus them. A simple formula: immigrants are bad, while Americans are good.

Conservative speakers have long blamed their own problems and mistakes on someone else. Yes, the United States has crime. In real life, as we will see later, immigrants do not cause our crime problem. Unfortunately, if native-born Americans take responsibility for our society’s own failings, they might want to make changes. Conservatives don’t want to change. That’s what makes them conservative. That, briefly, is why Donald Trump wants to blame immigrants for the United States’ problems. His rally audience seemed happy to accept that explanation, which appealed to their bigotry. Trump’s explanation absolved his audience from accepting responsibility for their own failings. It’s a simple rhetorical trick. Let’s look at how Trump did it.


Trump Said That Immigrants Cause Crime

Indeed, Trump rambled back and forth about immigration and crime throughout his speech. Let’s start by unpacking this passage:

“The radical Democrat Congresses turned our country into one giant sanctuary for serious criminal aliens. We protect all of the criminals; we don’t protect our own people. In fact, they raid our people. And the Republican Party. We believe our country should be a sanctuary for law abiding citizens who love America. If we’re going to make America great again, our first [task] is to make America safe again. We have to have a safe country.”

Now, for an American leader to attack immigrants creates a paradox. The United States is mostly a nation of immigrants. My maternal grandparents were Eastern European immigrants. As Trump commented, many Democrats want to offer sanctuary to refugees. In Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, however, immigrants are just criminals: “one giant sanctuary for serious criminal aliens.”

In fact, consistent with standard right-wing themes, Trump argued that immigrants—criminals, in his view—receive better treatment then citizens: as he said, “We protect all of the criminals, we don’t protect our own people.” That did not finish Trump’s attack on immigrants, as he quickly turned the tables on the concept of sanctuary cities: remember that he said that: “We believe our country should be a sanctuary for law abiding citizens who love America”—not a sanctuary for others.


Trump Said That American Values Are Anti-Immigrant

As he continued, Donald Trump made it a basic American value to despise immigrants. Let us look at that next: 

“They want to stop us from completing our mission to bring back American values. Secure America’s borders, millions and millions of people are pouring into our country. Nobody has any idea where they’re from. Last month, 129 countries were represented. They’re emptying their prisons into the United States of America.” [italics added]

Well, Trump obviously contradicted himself. If “nobody has any idea where they’re from,” how could we possibly know that they represent 129 countries? The moral issue, however, is more important. That is, immigrants, in Trump’s rhetoric, were not refugees coming for a better life, no, they were criminals who foreign countries maliciously sent us from their prisons. Trump’s speech contrasted the supposedly virtuous American citizens against the criminal immigrants. once you accept Trump’s logic, the way to solve our problems is to keep immigrants away so native-born Americans can live their lives free of foreign contamination. So much for welcoming the “huddled masses.”


Do Immigrants Really Cause Our Crime Problem? No.

Trump’s examples misled his gullible audience, for the numbers clearly show that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at, statistically, a far lower rate than native-born Americans. A major study published in the prestigious Annals of Epidemiology concluded that:

“Results from the present study—conducted with a well characterized and highly-regarded national survey—provide clear and compelling evidence that immigrants are involved in violent and nonviolent criminal behaviors at substantially lower rates than US-born Americans.”

For example, in my home state of Texas, native-born Americans are arrested for murder at twice the rate of undocumented immigrants. Native-born Americans are 2-1/2 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes. Let us keep in mind that the Texas border (which is not far from my home) is the poster for anti-immigrant fearmongering.

More broadly, the United States, like every nation, generates plenty of problems. Crime, income inequality, poverty, and public health all require careful solutions. However, if you want to pretend that we are not responsible for our problems, you need to blame someone else. Immigrants, who are often poor and vulnerable, make easy targets. That was Trump’s trick. The fault, as Shakespeare might have said, lies not in our stars (or our immigrants), but in ourselves.

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Earlier Trump Posts:

Donald Trump Didn't Make His Case for the Emergency Border Wall Declaration Because He Didn't Document His Facts

Divisive Rhetoric Continued in the 2018 US Midterms: The Case of Obama versus Trump

Trump, the "China Virus," and the Art of Controlling the Agenda by Misdirection


Hey! When Trump speaks well, I acknowledge it:

Trump and the NRA: Was the President Using His Business Communication Skills? 

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Research note: The idea that we can blame our problems on “the other” traces far back in human thought. Several scholars have investigated the subject. This month, I am reading essays by the communication critic Stuart Hall, highly recommended.

Image: Official White House photo

Biden on the Soul of America: Was He Unifying or Divisive? Or Both?

Independence Hall

President Joe Biden's speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia attacked “MAGA Republicans.” Biden highlighted The United States of America's divisions while appealing to our unity. He announced his topic as “The Continued Battle for the Soul of the Nation.”

Often criticized as divisive, Biden's speech sought unity by division. Biden did not create the divisions. Instead, he acknowledged them and tried to rearrange them.

Does that sound like a paradox? The great rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke explained in The Rhetoric of Motives that identification underlies all rhetoric. (By “rhetoric,” a rhetorical theorist means “the art of persuasion.”) Yet, identification invariably implies division. Burke explains:

“Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If [people] were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity.”

Burke’s point is that we identify ourselves, in part, by saying what we are not. If I tell people that I am an American, I imply that I am not a Canadian. If I call myself old, I separate myself from young people. Biden's Independence Hall speech divided “MAGA Republicans” from patriots, but he also divided MAGA Republicans from mainstream Republicans. So, although his speech was divisive, he did not divide the nation on party lines. Instead, he divided on the lines of patriots who respect the American system, opposed to people who do not. He tried to slice “mainstream Republicans” away from what he called the dangerous, unpatriotic MAGA movement. Since Donald Trump enjoys enormous Republican support, Biden walked on a thin line. At the same time, with hitherto respectable Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham threatening violence on the streets if Trump doesn't get his way, Biden could no longer pretend that the United States enjoys unity. Instead, Biden tried to confront the issue by manipulating the divisions within the Republican Party.

So, Biden asserted that former president Donald Trump was an extremist who threatened the United States’ Constitution. He established a division between MAGA Republicans and the rest of the United States. In the next breath, however, Biden divided MAGA Republicans from other Republicans:

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

“Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

“I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.”

Later in the speech, Biden argued for unity among groups that might otherwise be hostile. He asked those groups to unite to divide themselves from MAGA Republicans:

“Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.

“We, the people, will not let anyone or anything tear us apart. Today, there are dangers around us we cannot allow to prevail. We hear — you’ve heard it — more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool.”

So, was Biden's speech divisive? Certainly. Did his speech equally appeal to identification and unity? Yes. As Burke noted, identification and division are counterparts. Biden appealed to a common goal with which, he hoped, most Americans could identify: to maintain the American Republic. He divided MAGA Republicans, splitting them off from people who continue to respect our American way.

Let us keep in mind that division is not always bad. Donald Trump’s presidential rhetoric consistently pitted Americans against one another, often in harmful ways. In contrast, Biden’s speech tried to re-sort the ways in which Americans identify with one another. Indeed, Biden’s expression “MAGA Republicans” divided the Republican Party into opposing groups: those that support Donald Trump, and those who do not.

Indeed, just as identification lies at rhetoric’s center, so does division. The United States faces two possible paths. We know that most Americans favor the path that Biden laid out in his Independence Hall speech. Unfortunately, we also know that Biden's hope that MAGA Republicans make up a tiny minority was speculative at best.

The press pretty much overlooked Biden's most unifying statement, in which he identified with all Americans, even his opponents: 

But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America.

We identify with some people by dividing ourselves from others. Throughout its history, the United States of America has faced a conflict between conservatives and progressives. That conflict has represented itself in a slavery-based economic system, the struggle for civil rights, and the current debate about voting rights. That conflict tore us apart in the Civil War, and nearly tore us apart again during the 20th Century’s civil rights movement. In both of those cases, conservative extremists threatened to destroy the country rather than to accept human equality. The United States’ fracture line threatens to split again. Can we find unity and common cause? Or would the Republican Party prefer to destroy America simply because their ideas were not popular enough to win an election?

President Joe Biden's Independence Hall speech did not create divisions; he acknowledged them. He gave the Republican Party one last chance to identify with the rest of the country. Are they willing to take that opportunity? Or, as too many of them threaten, do they want to create another Civil War, fighting for an evil cause that will surely fail?

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Adolf Hitler’s “Christian Nationalist” Speech

Donald Trump Says That the MAGA Crowd Loves Black People, Except When They Don't

John Kennedy Spoke for World-Wide Freedom and Independence in his 1962 Fourth of July Speech

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Research note: Kenneth Burke's monumental book The Rhetoric of Motives makes for heavy reading, but it is worth the effort 

Photo: William D. Harpine