Seven years and one month into his presidency, Barack Obama is aghast the tone of politics in the United States hasn’t gotten better since he took office.
He mentioned it during his State of the Union address last month, and he reiterated it earlier this week in a speech at the Illinois State Assembly, where he was a back bencher from 1997 to 2004.
“[O]ne of my few regrets,” Obama said, “is my inability to reduce the polarization and the meanness in our politics.”
Yet, the 44th president has been the most divisive chief executive since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took unprecedented radical steps – though with smiling good humor and bonhomie – in an attempt to lift the nation from the Great Depression. The president, on the other hand, has governed against the will of the people, has refused in most places to compromise on legislation and has signed sweeping executive orders on issues in order to get around Congress.
Meanwhile, his rhetoric has pitted culture against culture, religion against religion, race against race, class against class, gender against gender, and sexual orientation against sexual orientation. And even into this year, he has blamed many of the nation’s problems on his predecessor.