Title: Political tribalism isn't the real reason America is divided (opinion) - CNN
Headings: Tribalism isn't the real reason America is divided
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Content: We're spending more on political campaigns, moving to places where our political views are popular and, according to a new study in the American Journal of Political Science, our politics may even be overriding our morals. As Peter Hatemi, one of the study's authors, explains: " We will switch our moral compass depending on how it fits with what we believe politically." Our obsession with the presidency
Partly to blame is our increasing obsession with the American presidency as an embodiment of hope and change, to borrow a phrase. Long before former President Barack Obama was supposed to save the country from its many suffering ills, so too were Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush. These were merely men — politicians, at that — but onto each of them was foisted a heavy mantle of expectation that was never going to be fully realized. The power of incumbency: Four two-term presidents in a row? The paternalism of the presidency was baked in from the get-go. George Washington recoiled at the notion of being called "the father of his country" in newspapers, and, as Thomas Fleming writes in " The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers ," Washington did "his utmost to avoid acknowledging this tendency to view him as a demigod."