Workers put up a sign on the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wi., on July 16.ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/Getty Images
It depends on what the meaning of the word “unity” is.
In the wake of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump and during the proceedings of the Republican National Convention this week, the term appears everywhere, tossed into speeches, employed in commentary, inserted into campaign themes. Even divisive leaders are talking about unity.
It’s the word of the week. But just because it is prominent in the American conversation doesn’t mean it is very noticeable in American civic life – not now, not in the past several years.
And while there is broad agreement among Americans on some highly visible issues (large margins of support for abortion rights and limits on the sale of firearms, for example), there are vast differences among those in the political class – a measure of the chasm between Americans, who deplore incendiary politics and long for a sense of national unity, and their leaders, who stoke division.
Now, with the country’s eyes on the Republican convention under way in Milwaukee, the talk of unity is particularly conspicuous.
But while on the surface the calls for unity are going out to the whole country, the real emphasis is on creating GOP unity for the campaign ahead, not forging unity among all Americans. In short, the unity the Republicans are seeking is unity among their own supporters.
That’s because political leaders know the danger of disunity. When parties have fractious presidential primaries or conventions, their general election prospects are weakened.
When the Democrats were so divided that they required 103 ballots to select John W. Davis as their 1924 nominee, they were easily defeated by president Calvin Coolidge. When former governor Ronald Reagan of California challenged Gerald Ford for the GOP nomination in 1976, former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia won the election.
When Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts challenged the renomination of Mr. Carter in 1980, the party was split wide open – and Mr. Carter, who eventually prevailed in that struggle, lost the presidency to Mr. Reagan.
The creation of party unity is a major reason to hold conventions at all.
Most of the time in the modern era, the identity of the party’s nominee is apparent, as was the case this year. Incumbent presidents have not been denied renomination in 56 years – not since 1968, when Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the race in late March.
No one doubted when the Democrats gathered for their convention four years ago that Joe Biden would be the nominee; he was the clear victor in the primaries and had the delegates required to prevail. The rationale for holding these four-day spectacles, complete with speeches and hurrah-for-our-side demonstrations, is to sow unity.
That’s what the Republicans are doing this week. They want party unity – all the better to prepare for the fight ahead. To the extent that they want a broader unity, it is the hope that a large majority of Americans unite behind their candidate, Mr. Trump, in the November election.
Mr. Trump said, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – not the language of broad unity – when he was taken from the stage in Butler, Pa., Saturday night. When those in the convention crowd chant, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” they are not pleading for national unity.
They are pleading for unity against their opponents. Indeed, the raised fists that are so prominent now provide a marked contrast with the remarks of George H.W. Bush, a Republican of a different era, who at his 1989 inauguration said, “This is the age of the offered hand.”
“Most Republicans are together on the big issues,” said former senator Rob Portman of Ohio, whose retirement provided the opening for J.D. Vance to be elected to the Senate, in an interview.
It was not a coincidence that three of the first four elected officials to make podium appearances at the convention were Black, nor was the obvious outreach to female voters implicit in scheduling women for highly visible speaking roles an accident.
Black people and women are principal elements of the Democratic coalition, and the Republicans are making a special effort to peel away support from their rivals. But the prominence of Black people and women at the GOP conclave ardently supporting Mr. Trump is also a subtle way of promoting the notion that the party understands the diverse nature of the contemporary American electorate and that those who might ordinarily identify as Democrats are welcome to unite behind Mr. Trump.
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The emphasis in Milwaukee this week is less on national unity than on having the delegates leave the swing state of Wisconsin united in their desire to defeat Mr. Biden – or whoever the Democratic nominee is. Otherwise divisive figures who are popular within the new GOP, such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, would not be given a forum in prime time.
When she did appear, her bid for unity was clearly directed at Republicans, not the general electorate. “For far too long the establishment in Washington has sold us out,” she said in an obvious reference to the Democratic establishment in the capital. “They promised unity and delivered division.”
There is another weak point in contemporary talk of unity: political figures are speaking separately about coming together.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden did not appear together to calm the nation after the shooting in Pennsylvania. When COVID-19 vaccines – a Trump initiative, after all – became available, the two did not hold a joint event to urge Americans to get the shot.
In 2017, after Hurricane Maria ravaged Texas, Mr. Carter, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama gathered together at the hurricane relief concert in College Station, Tex. It was a great moment of unity – but they were all out of office.