Pat Buchanan Fears Trump Can’t Unify a Thoroughly Divided Country

Presidents often use State of the Union speeches to unify the country and aim the ship of state toward common national goals, but longtime conservative talking head and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said Tuesday President Trump faces a much tougher task.

On “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Buchanan said it does not matter what kind of speech Trump delivers Tuesday night.

“The speech might be unifying, and my guess is the president will try to do that and it will be well-received,” he told guest host Raymond Arroyo. “I don’t think he will give a divisive speech at all, or ‘my side against the other side.’ But the truth is, Raymond, the country is so deeply divided now.”

Even if Trump did manage to inspire feelings of unity, that will be fleeting, Buchanan said.

“I don’t see the country coming together even if it did for a couple of days afterwards,” he said.

“The great theater that was the State of the Union speech, I think, is dissipating, and it’s a reflection and manifestation of the divisions in the parties, between the parties and in the country.”

Buchanan reminisced about his time working as communications director during President Ronald Reagan’s second term. It was Reagan who, before Buchanan’s arrival, came up with the now-standard practice of inviting heroic or otherwise notable Americans to sit in the gallery in Congress during the speech.

Reagan’s first guest was Lenny Skutnik, who had rescued a passenger on the ill-fated Florida Air flight that crashed into the 14th Street Bridge crossing the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., shortly after taking off from National Airport in 1982.

Then there was 1986 when, Buchanan recalled, he was hosting a luncheon with a group of network anchors and major TV news reporters hours before the State of the Union speech was to be delivered.

“And someone came in and said, ‘Pat, the Challenger just blew up,'” he said.

Reagan ended up canceling the State of the Union in the wake of that tragic space shuttle explosion.

“And he went on with Peggy Noonan’s famous speech, [written] with the president — one of the best speeches Reagan ever delivered — and his State of the Union didn’t take place until a week later,” he said.

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But Buchanan said rallying the country is harder now than ever.

“The great theater that was the State of the Union speech, I think, is dissipating, and it’s a reflection and manifestation of the divisions in the parties, between the parties and in the country,” he said.

Presidential historian Craig Shirley, appearing separately on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” said that division can be seen in the handful of Democratic members of Congress who are refusing even to show up for the speech.

“This is a relatively new phenomenon,” he said. “There was at least the aura or the — not the spectacle, but the premise of some sort of bipartisanship at least on this one day when the president of the United States speaks to a joint session. It’s a joint session of Congress of both parties, and the American people. Everybody was respectful, even afterward. Often their commentary would focus on those things that united them.”

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Buchanan lamented that partisans do not even pause on occasions like the State of the Union address.

“I’ve always felt — at least, I’m a traditionalist — I felt the president, whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican, this is his moment,” he said. “He represents one-third of the government of the United States, himself. There’s no equal to the president of the United States in the Congress of the United States.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.