Two Former Presidents Call for the Nation to Come Together

In separate and unrelated appearances yesterday, former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both warned that the United States is being torn apart by hatreds and called for the nation to come together. Neither Bush nor Obama mentioned President Trump by name, but both speeches sounded to many like sharp critiques of the current president.

Bush, the last Republican to sit in the Oval Office, spoke out at a conference he convened in New York to support democracy. Bush defended immigration and free trade, denounced bigotry, and criticized what he called the “casual cruelty” of current public discourse. President Trump has proposed increasing American barriers to both trade and immigrants, and he has repeatedly lashed out at his opponents in an unusually blunt manner for a sitting president.

“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America,” Bush said. Nativism refers to policies favoring native-born citizens over immigrants. “We’ve seen the return of isolationist sentiments, forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places,” Bush added.

Obama—speaking in New Jersey at a campaign rally for a Democrat running for governor—defended his record on health care at a time when Trump has been trying to dismantle it, and he also pointed to the social, economic, and racial divides that threaten American society.

“What we can’t have is the same old politics of division that we have seen so many times before that dates back centuries,” Obama said. “Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. That has folks looking 50 years back. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. Come on!”

Both former presidents have largely avoided criticizing Trump since he was inaugurated in January. But the sight of the two most recent presidents back on the public stage on the same day, however coincidental, reinforced the broader alarm among establishment leaders of both parties.

“The two presidents speaking out so forcefully and eloquently is a warning that some basic principles of democracy that both parties have long supported at home and abroad are in jeopardy,” says Antony J. Blinken, who served as Obama’s deputy secretary of state and attended Bush’s speech on Thursday.

Bush also released a “call to action” report examining threats to American democracy and making recommendations for protecting U.S. institutions. The paper was drafted by Peter H. Wehner, a former adviser in his White House, and Thomas O. Melia, a former State Department official under Obama, giving it a bipartisan stamp of approval.

Asked by a reporter as he left the hall whether his message would be heard in the White House, Bush smiled, nodded slightly and said, “I think it will.”

In his speech, Bush lamented that “bigotry seems emboldened” and “our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

Pointing a finger at the nation’s leaders, he said, “We know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed; it is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”

Bush also spoke out forcefully against hate groups: “Bigotry or white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed.”

Bush emphasized the seriousness of the Russian effort to influence last year’s election, interference that Trump has dismissed as a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats and the news media. “America has experienced a sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions,” Bush said.

In keeping with tradition, Obama has mostly stayed out of the political fray since leaving office in January.

“You notice I haven’t been commenting a lot on politics lately,” he said yesterday in Richmond, Virginia, after the New Jersey campaign appearance. “But here’s one thing I know: If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you’re not going to be able to govern them.”

He added: “Instead of looking for ways to work together to get things done in a practical way, we’ve got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry, to demonize people who have different ideas, to get the base all riled up because it provides a short-term tactical advantage.”

Obama largely avoided speaking about specific policy debates, but his implied reference to President Trump was clear.

“The world counts on America having its act together,” Obama said. “The world is looking to us as an example. The world asks what our values and ideals are and are we living up to our creed.”

There was no immediate comment from President Trump or the White House on the former presidents’ remarks.