The attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump on July 13 must be a moment for profound prayer, reflection and conversion on the part of politicians and all Americans, especially those whose voices help shape our culture. Such violence has rightly been unequivocally condemned by politicians on both sides of the aisle, world leaders, our bishops and the pope. There is some consolation in noting how swift and universal the rejection of political violence has been, for which we ought to be grateful even as we are sobered by the challenge of reconciling our deep divisions.
We pray for Mr. Trump, in gratitude that he escaped an attempt on his life, and for the comfort of his loved ones, who have gone through a traumatizing event. We pray for Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief who was killed while seeking to protect his family, for his wife and children, and for those who remain hospitalized in critical condition. We pray for the young man who caused this trauma and for his family.
After an event which so threatens our peace and security, people are understandably inclined to look for someone or something to blame. At the time of publication, no evidence suggests that anyone but the shooter is responsible for the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life and the killing of a bystander. His motive is currently unknown, and any speculation about it is unhelpful and likely to contribute to further division and confusion.
[Did God save Donald Trump’s life?]
Even without a clear understanding of the shooter’s motivation, there is a strong consensus that polarization, increasingly vicious rhetoric and the demonization of political enemies have all contributed to the danger of this moment in the life of the United States. This cannot justify the misleading suggestion—such as that made by Ohio Senator J.D. Vance immediately after the shooting, and just two days before he was announced as Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential pick—that any campaign rhetoric “led directly” to the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life. But there is ample reason for this terrible event to call politicians and all Americans to examine their consciences regarding how we think and speak about our political opponents.
Indeed, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden seem to be on the same page about that. Mr. Biden, in a Sunday address from the Oval Office, called on Americans to “lower the temperature in our politics,” and his campaign said it was pausing television advertising for an appropriate period. Mr. Trump has said that he is completely rewriting his convention speech, scheduled to be delivered on the night of Thursday, July 18, to focus on unifying the country rather than on its previous theme of attacking Mr. Biden’s policies and record as president.
While commitments to calmer political rhetoric are necessary and welcome—and we pray for them to continue past this week and next—true conversion and reconciliation from our poisonous level of division will require much more. It is not enough merely to moderate partisan criticism, to increase calls for unity or to turn down the temperature of our politics, as if American political life were basically healthy except for a temporary fever. As a body politic, we are chronically ill and in need of treatment that must extend beyond this election cycle.
We do not need the same politics in a better tone. We need “a better kind of politics, one truly at the service of the common good,” as Pope Francis called for in his encyclical on social friendship, “Fratelli Tutti.”
True service of the common good requires far more than rhetoric about it. In order to embrace the common good more fully, it is worth looking at how it is often distorted. “Lack of concern for the vulnerable,” Pope Francis says, “can hide behind a populism that exploits them demagogically for its own purposes, or a liberalism that serves the economic interests of the powerful.”
Both tendencies can be found in American politics, often mutually reinforcing each other. Much of the country has suffered economically and culturally under arrangements that serve the interests of the already powerful and secure, who too easily dismiss the concerns of those who are struggling or even mock them as prejudiced and “deplorable.” That has provided fertile ground for demagogic attacks both on immigrants as threats to American safety and prosperity and on the media and political elite as “enemies of the people.”
In contrast, the common good calls us not only to seek our private goods alongside each other, but truly to cooperate in seeking each other’s good and especially the good of the most vulnerable among us. At its best, politics consists of such cooperation, accomplished in the United States through the institutions, traditions and norms of our democratic republic.
But tragically, our contemporary politics seems to be more a “war of all against all.” There is more than enough blame to go around for this, even in the immediate aftermath of the shooting: for awful jokes about Mr. Trump’s brush with death, for conspiracy theories of every stripe and for quasi-apocalyptic rhetoric about the end of democracy.
But while political actors from across the ideological spectrum have contributed to polarization, and “at all costs” rhetoric deserves to be rejected as dangerous, it would be naïve and pointless to pretend that such responsibility is distributed evenly. Even as we pray in thanksgiving for his safety and swift recovery, we must acknowledge that Mr. Trump has routinely violated, and celebrated the violation of, norms that most other politicians at least attempt to honor.
Before the 2020 election, the editors of America warned about the danger Mr. Trump represented to the constitutional order, especially because of his refusal to acknowledge legitimate constraints on his own power. Following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, we called for his impeachment, conviction and barring from future federal office. Sadly, his conduct over the last three and half years and thus far in the present campaign have not given us cause to withdraw those concerns. If his attempted assassination can serve—as we pray that it may—as a catalyst for the United States to seek a more unifying politics, then he will need to prove himself willing to be one of the primary agents of such a change.
Healing from the wounds of our divisions cannot be accomplished by the election or defeat of any particular candidate. Indeed, the all-too-frequent sense that the election of one person—no matter how high the office—is either indispensably necessary or irretrievably catastrophic is a symptom of the derangement of our political life.
We need politicians—and activists and the media and voters—to set goals both higher and lower. Higher, toward true cooperation in seeking the common good, and lower, in recognizing that no single election outcome decides the fate of American democracy by itself.
Our common political life is built not only by electoral victory or defeat, but even more by the way we live and work together before, during and after elections. To realize a better kind of politics, we need to begin to make the concerns of others—both those of the poor and the vulnerable, but also those of our political enemies—our own, even when it is not advantageous for our own goals and agendas. It is no accident that “Fratelli Tutti” begins with a long meditation on the parable of the good Samaritan. The common good requires not only answering the question “Who is my neighbor?” but taking the risk to care for those from whom we may be estranged.
