On this July 4th, as our nation marks 250 years, it’s worth pausing to remember something we’ve had to relearn again and again: that division is not new to America, and neither is the choice to rise above it. Some of our greatest presidents did not wait for their opponents to agree with them, they chose, once elected, to become President of all the People, not just the party that put them in office. Looking back at those moments might help us do what they did: focus not on how we differ, but on what unites US.
It started before political parties even had names. George Washington, watching factions form in his own cabinet. He warned the nation in his Farewell Address that the “spirit of party” would distract public councils and turn neighbor against neighbor. Washington had no party to put aside, he simply refused to let one claim him. That refusal became the first American model of what a president owes the whole country, not just the coalition that elected him.
Thomas Jefferson began his presidency with an outstretched hand to the very rivals who had spent the 1800 election attacking him, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” he told the nation, choosing to lead as though he hadn’t beaten anyone at all.
No president tested the principle more than Abraham Lincoln. He took office with the country literally coming apart, and rather than surround himself with loyalists, he filled his cabinet with the very rivals who had fought him for the nomination, men who doubted him, underestimated him, and in some cases despised him. He wanted the best minds in the room, not the most agreeable ones. And when the war finally neared its end, he called not for vengeance but for “malice toward none, charity for all.”
A century later, that same instinct showed up in quieter ways: Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System with votes from the other party. Ford, inheriting a presidency in crisis with no mandate to lean on, he didn’t ask the country to pick a side, he asked it to heal. “Our long national nightmare is over,” he said. Not a partisan message. A human one.
Then came Ronald Reagan and the Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a model built not on agreement, but on disagreement without contempt. The two men were genuine ideological opposites who spent their days sparring over the size and shape of government, and yet came together in 1983 to save Social Security from collapse. By most accounts, they left the fight at the office door, sharing a drink and a laugh after arguing all day. It’s become shorthand for a politics we’ve since lost: the idea that a rival could remain a friend.
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush stood before a joint session of Congress, Republicans and Democrats seated together, many literally arm in arm, and spoke not as the leader of a party but as the voice of a wounded country asking to be led as one nation, one people.
None of these men agreed with their rivals. Lincoln’s cabinet clashed constantly. Reagan and O’Neill never pretended to see government the same way. That’s a point worth remembering: unity was never about erasing disagreement. It was about refusing to let disagreement become the whole story.
Two hundred fifty years is a long time to argue about how to get somewhere, without ever losing sight of the fact that we’re all trying to get to the same place. A place where our kids can build a better life than we had, where hard work still means something, where a neighbor is still a neighbor, regardless of what sign is in their yard. Those aren’t Democratic ideals or Republican ideals. They’re American ones. And maybe the most patriotic thing we can do to celebrate our 250th isn’t to win an argument, but to remember that the person on the other side loves this country too, in their own way, just as much as we do.
Let’s ask our leaders to put People over Party. Not because our differences don’t matter, but because what unites us matters more. Happy Birth Day America.
