Post-election unity: Can America really come together?

By Janet I. Tu
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Sen. John Kerry, in his concession speech, talked about "the desperate need for unity — for finding the common ground, coming together."

President Bush, in his victory speech, told the nation: "I will need your support and I will work to earn it. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation."

Whether the public will take them up on it is an entirely different matter. Although Washington residents, echoing voters nationwide, are troubled by the divisiveness, some aren't sure reconciliation is realistic.

"People are saying we need to unite under Bush and his views to bring this country together, but I feel so lost with the idea of uniting under a president I feel I relate to on absolutely nothing and who does not represent me whatsoever," said Emily Johnson, a 22-year-old office assistant in Seattle.

Mike Wayte, also of Seattle, voted for Bush but also for candidates and issues that lost.

"My advice to those who voted for John Kerry," said Wayte, a 64-year-old retired engineer, "is to get over it and work constructively over the next four years to do better next time. ... Getting over it includes stopping the insults — insulting the president and those of us who voted for him, and quit trying to tell us the sky has fallen."

Everett Worthington, chairman of the psychology department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and author of "Forgiving and Reconciling," said he believes people want to heal — and he considers that important.

"At this point, to maintain our differences is just going to weaken our country," he said.

Worthington says reconciling the divided nation means restoring trust on both sides, which will take time and cutting each other some slack.

"The Democrats are going to say: 'It's easy for you to talk about trust. You won.' So a lot depends on if President Bush means what he says. Will he follow through with these promises and pledges to try and rebuild unity? And the Democrats could say to their followers: 'Let's keep an open mind here and give them the benefit of the doubt.' "
 
Worthington encourages people to take a wait-and-see attitude for the next few months, to see if both sides live up to their pledges of unity.

"Talk has gotten us where we are now — the rhetoric, the positioning, the posturing. We need toleration while each side is allowed the chance to be trustworthy in their actions."

The Rev. Raymond Helmick, a Jesuit priest who teaches conflict resolution at Boston College and has mediated conflicts in the Middle East, believes there's an opportunity and responsibility now for people on both sides of the divide to talk to each other with respect.

The Bush administration, he says, "needs to be confronted with the fact that they have not been listening [on issues such as the war in Iraq], and it's to their disadvantage that they're not listening."

The Democratic Party, Helmick says, needs to acknowledge that it's been "tone-deaf to concern that's very deep all over the country" on issues such as marriage and family.

He also sees a benefit to having people talk to each other on a local level.

"When people are that polarized, the first thing you need is to understand each other in human terms," Helmick said. "Are people going to classify each other into the human and not-really human? If you bring people into genuine contact, they get past that."

The Rev. Sanford Brown, head of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, is trying to do just that with what he hopes will be quarterly meetings of local Christian pastors who represent a variety of viewpoints. For the first meeting, held in August, he invited Catholics and mainline and evangelical Protestants.

"My hope is just that we'll get to know each other," Brown said. "It's hard to lob hand grenades at the other side when you know their names, you know them, you know their passions and they're your friends."

Rabbi Daniel Weiner of Temple de Hirsch Sinai isn't so optimistic.

"I think we'd all like to have this sense that we're going to come together politically and culturally. I don't think that's realistic."

Because the campaign was so contentious, Weiner said, the country has ended up divided in many ways, but most deeply along cultural and religious grounds.

"If anything, this election has solidified that divide," he said.

It is more productive at this point, he believes, for religious moderates and liberals to work with each other to get their voices heard than to dialogue with the religious right.

"The religious left needs to get organized in a hurry," he said.

Pastor Joseph Fuiten of Bothell's Cedar Park Assembly of God church believes the country is less divided than people think. He points to the passage of constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages in all 11 states where they were on the ballots.

Fuiten says he's willing to talk with those he disagrees with, and perhaps give some ground on issues such as the role of government in alleviating poverty. "You need partners to get anything done, really," he said.

But on some issues — those he calls clear biblical mandates — he is not willing to compromise.

"The goal is not lack of division," Fuiten said. "The goal is truth and morality."

Indeed, the fact that some of the nation's deepest divides center around religion and moral issues makes unity much harder, said Nick Wagner, an attorney who heads the Washington State Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Section.

"Those issues are harder than, say: 'How do you divide the pie?' " he said.

"Those kinds of issues, where people view things as matters of principle, are the hardest to resolve."

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com