Presidents historically used aspirational unity rhetoric that exceeded current facts

Evidence

But it was a misrepresentation designed to improve the country. The invocation of unity, which over time has been expanded to take account of minority groups and others who fell outside Jay’s notion of unity based on similarity, has been a defining element of presidential leadership. At its most forceful, it brings people together by persuading them to embrace an ideal of unity that goes beyond what the contemporary facts might warrant. Every modern president before 2017 took some care not to turn one part of the people against another. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 147

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the motif of civil religion as deliberate fictive unity — echoes Rousseau’s legislator framing. — connects to: Founding-era unity rhetoric was a conscious misrepresentation of American diversity — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 146