CHAPTER 28 A Divided Nation
This chapter concentrates on the second term of George W. Bush’s presidency, Barack Obama’s two terms in office, and the first two
years of the Donald Trump presidency. The chapter opens by calling attention to the unique and surprising elections of both Senator
Barack Obama and his successor, the real estate mogul Donald Trump. The chapter then examines Bush’s domestic policies, and his
response to Hurricane Katrina, immigration debates, and the economic crisis of 2008. The chapter then examines the presidency of
Barack Obama. The first black man elected as president in U.S. history, Obama faced a conservative backlash as he attempted to pro-
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Barack Obama and Donald Trump
II. The Winds of Change
A. The 2004 Election
1. Democrats sensed a golden opportunity.
B. Bush’s Second Term
1. Bush wished to “end tyranny in the world.”
C. Hurricane Katrina
1. In August 2005, New Orleans was devastated when its levee system broke and the city began to flood.
D. The New Orleans Disaster
E. Battle over the Border
1. The borderland embracing parts of the United States and Mexico has been a source of ongoing tension for Americans.
2. The Bush and Obama administrations greatly accelerated efforts to police the U.S.-Mexico border.
3. Some Americans claimed the federal government was not doing enough enforcing, and formed unofficial militias to do it
themselves.
F. Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations”
1. September 11 raised fears of a “clash” between the West and Islamic “civilizations.”
2. Such fears belied historical development and tended to distort the meaning of the word “Islam.”
G. The Constitution and Liberty
2. A 2003 Supreme Court decision on affirmative action reaffirmed the right of colleges and universities to take race into
account in admissions decisions.
3. Two major rulings concerning gay Americans emphasized a view of the Constitution as a “living document,” rather than
one bound by “original intent.”
(2015), a 5–4 decision.
H. The Midterm Elections of 2006
1. Democrats expected gains due to Bush’s plummeting popularity.
2. Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress.
III. The Great Recession
A. The Housing Bubble
1. In 2008, the American banking system found itself on the brink of collapse.
2. The roots of the crisis lay in a combination of public and private policies that favored economic speculation.
B. The Bubble Bursts
1. In 2006 and 2007, home prices began to fall. Many homeowners owed more money than their homes were worth and
could not pay monthly mortgage payments.
2. The value of the mortgage-based securities fell precipitously, and banks were left with billions of dollars of worthless
investments.
C. “A Conspiracy against the Public”
1. Leading bankers and investment houses helped to bring down the American economy.
2. The reputation of stockbrokers and bankers fell to lows last seen during the Great Depression.
a. Goldman Sachs fined for selling mortgage securities and betting against them
D. The Collapse of Market Fundamentalism
1. The crisis exposed the flaws in market fundamentalism and deregulation.
2. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank from 1987 to 2006, had presided over deregulation, artificially low
E. Bush and the Crisis
1. The Bush administration allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, and Lehman Brothers’s failure created a domino effect.
3. The crisis also revealed the limits of the American “safety net.”
F. The Emergence of Barack Obama
2. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and first gained national attention with an eloquent speech at the Democratic
National Convention.
G. The 2008 Campaign
2. McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. The selection of Palin raised questions among many Americans about
McCain’s judgment.
3. With his promise of change, Obama won the election.
a. His election redrew the nation’s political map.
H. Obama’s First Inauguration
1. Few presidents have come into office facing such serious problems, but many Americans viewed Barack Obama’s
election as cause for optimism.
IV. Obama in Office
1. In many ways, Obama’s first policy initiatives lived up to the promise of change.
a. Sonia Sotomayor
3. The explosion of a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico highlighted the downsides of globalization and deregulation.
A. Health Care Debate
2. Following bitter partisan debate, in 2010 Congress passed a bill that required all Americans to purchase health insurance
3. Every Republican in Congress voted against the bill, denouncing it as “government takeover” of health care.
4. Throughout Obama’s presidency, Republicans remained bitterly opposed to the new law and vowed to repeal it when
6. Twenty-three Republican-controlled state governments refused the expansion of Medicaid coverage.
B. Financial Reform
1. Financial regulatory reform also occurred in 2010, but the power of big banks and Wall Street remained largely
unchallenged, and homeowners received little assistance.
C. The Problem of Inequality
1. In 2014, the economic recovery gathered momentum, but most of the benefit went to the top 1 percent of earners, while
the middle class continued to shrink and the number of people in poverty grew.
D. The Occupy Movement
1. Economic inequality took center stage in 2011 when protestors camped out in parks and held rallies nationwide, vowing
to “Occupy Wall Street” in protest of bank malfeasance and declining equality in America.
2. The Occupy movement spread through the use of social media and recalled civil disobedience efforts of earlier eras.
a. “The 1 percent” as political language
3. Low-wage workers (particularly those in fast food) were inspired to demand a higher minimum wage and saw some
progress.
V. The Obama Presidency
A. The Continuing Economic Crisis
B. Postracial America?
1. Despite the reality, Obama’s election sparked a public discussion of a new “postracial” America.
2. A Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reflected this “postracial” view.
3. A series of controversial incidents involving the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police and other authorities
4. The “Black Lives Matter” national movement emerged in response.
5. Unrest erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after a white police officer shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.
6. Investigations revealed black residents of Ferguson suffered routine racial discrimination in a system dominated by white
authorities.
7. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) comes from Barack Obama’s Eulogy at Emanuel African
C. Obama and the World
1. Obama fulfilled his biggest campaign promise and removed the last combat troops from Iraq, but increased troop levels in
Afghanistan.
2. Obama extended the USA Patriot Act, and failed to close Guantanamo military prison.
3. U.S. involvement overseas ranged from the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan to aid for the overthrow of Libya’s
dictator Gaddafi and an expansion of the war on terror in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
D. The Rise of ISIS
1. Obama also faced the new crisis of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (or ISIS), a brutal occupying regime that carried out
horrific acts against the people under its control and increasingly sponsored acts of terror beyond the Middle East.
2. By 2018, facing counterattacks by the United States and its allies, ISIS was on the defensive throughout the Middle East,
E. The Republican Resurgence
1. Tea Party activists campaigned against expanding federal power and brought about a Republican takeover of the House in
2010.
2. On the state level, conservative Republicans moved to curtail abortion rights and eliminate the bargaining rights of public–
employee unions.
F. The 2012 Campaign
1. Although a somewhat controversial choice, Republicans nominated Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate (the first
Mormon in the role) and Tea Party favorite Paul D. Ryan as his running mate.
2. Obama entered the campaign with political liabilities—the economy, Afghanistan, and the continued Republican assault
on his health care law.
VI. President Trump
A. The Candidates in 2016
2. Clinton faced a challenge for the nomination from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-proclaimed “democratic
socialist.”
3. The Republican Party fractured with seventeen candidates, including governors, senators, and business leaders, vying for
nomination.
B. The Election of Trump
1. Trump’s campaign played on nativist, racial, and gender resentments spawned by the growing diversity of American
society and the decline of manufacturing.
a. Who Is an American? (Primary Source document feature) provides part of the “Speech at the Democratic National
Convention” (2016) by Khizr Khan, who criticizes Trump’s nativist pronouncements.
3. He cast doubt on traditional alliances such as NATO.
5. Trump’s political outlook had a strong racial component.
7. Trump condemned immigrants from Mexico as murderers and galvanized supporters by promising to build a wall along
the long border with Mexico.
9. Trump won key “swing” states such as Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where working-class
voters felt resentment against NAFTA.
C. Trump in Office
1. Despite his promise to upend the political system, many of Trump’s policies as president were standard conservative
Republican fare.
3. Trump broke with Republican free trade orthodoxy by raising tariffs on goods imported from China, Canada, the
European Union, and other countries in the hope of promoting American manufacturing.
5. In foreign affairs, Trump withdrew the United States from the multinational agreement that limited Iran’s ability to
develop nuclear weapons.
7. The Justice Department appointed a special prosecutor, Robert Mueller.
9. The contents of the redacted Mueller report, issued in April 2019, remain a major issue in national politics.
D. Trump and Immigration
1. One of Trump’s first acts was to ban travel to the United States from several Muslim-majority countries.
3. Despite low immigration and crime in the United States, Trump blamed immigrants for national problems.
E. Trump and the Environment
2. While global warming was not originally a partisan issue, during the 1990s more Republicans came to reject the scientific
consensus that human activity causes climate change.
4. He revived the American coal industry, which was suffering a long decline because of competition from less expensive
natural gas.
F. A Polarized Nation
1. The critical tone set by Trump’s tweets resulted in a coarsening of public discourse.
2. His supporters, who represented around forty percent of Americans, remained loyal.
G. The Elections of 2018
1. During the campaign, Trump traveled the country holding rallies and whipping up fear of immigrants.
a. These appeals consolidated his political base but alienated more moderate voters.
2. Democrats replaced Republicans in forty seats in the House, regaining control of that body.
5. More than 100 women were elected to the House, the most in American history.
VII. Freedom in the Twenty-First Century
A. Exceptional America
1. In the United States, people lived longer and healthier compared to previous generations, and enjoyed unprecedented
material comforts.
3. Ideas of American freedom seemed more attuned to individual advancement than to the kind of broad social welfare seen
in other developed nations.
5. American exceptionalism had a darker side that included the world’s highest gun-murder rates and increasing incidents of
horrific shooting massacres.
6. Over forty percent of the world’s privately owned guns are in the United States.
a. In 2012 there were 9,146 murders with guns in the United States, as opposed to 158 in Germany, 173 in Canada, and
7. In 2018, hundreds of thousands of young people demonstrated across the country for gun control.
B. Varieties of Freedom
1. America’s tolerance for diversity and the rise of antigovernment conservatives reshaped the idea of American freedom
into individual fulfillment of potential.
C. Battles Over History
1. In a politically polarized nation, history itself has become a battleground.
3. The monument controversy took a deadly turn in 2017 when a group of white supremacists marched in Charlottesville,
Virginia, chanting anti-Semitic and racist slogans.
5. President Trump refused to apportion blame, insisting that there were “very fine people” on both sides.
D. Learning from History
1. At the end of 2018, the world seemed far more unstable than anyone could have predicted after the Cold War ended.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What were the most important issues that arose during President George W. Bush’s second term in office?
• Discuss undocumented immigration. Is it fair to allow the undocumented immigrants amnesty? How do the immigrants impact the
American economy?
• What did Hurricane Katrina say about the ability of the Bush administration to lead through adversity?
• Should there be another Great Society–type program launched?
• Assess and analyze the economic crisis of 2008. What caused the crisis? To what extent did Americans begin to question market
fundamentalism?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
Charlottesville
This site provides access to the documentary Documenting Hate: Charlottesville (Frontline and ProPublica, 2018, 3 episodes). It also includes articles
and clips from other documentaries.
Divided States of America
The website provides the four-hour, two-part PBS documentary on the partisanship that gridlocked Washington in the Obama era, and the polar-
ized America that Trump inherited as president. Additional interviews are included.
Donald Trump
This site provides access to the PBS Frontline series documentary Trump’s Road to the White House (2017, 2 hrs.). It includes interviews and an
interactive script.
A PBS Frontline series production, Trump’s Showdown (2018, 4 hrs., 2 parts) chronicles the Mueller investigation into corruption in the election
and presidency of Donald Trump.
Hurricane Katrina
The site provides the first episode of the documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Spike Lee, 2006–2007, 4 hrs.).
Immigration
This Democracy Now! site includes interviews and articles on a wide range of modern topics including immigration, white supremacy, and climate
change.
Islam in America
The National Humanities Center. Teacher Serve: An Interactive Curriculum Enrichment Service for Teachers. Toolbox Library offers a plethora of
primary sources, discussion questions, additional online sources, and talking points. This site takes you to “Islam in America: From African Slaves
to Malcolm X.”
The Mueller Report
Read the full Mueller Report released on the PBS website.
New Wars
From the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, select a time period (e.g., New American Roles) and enter an exhibit
that includes a movie, learning resources, statistics, a printable exhibition, maps, and time lines.
Obama
USA Patriot Act
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Appiah, Anthony. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. New York: Liveright, 2018.
Begala, Paul. It’s Still the Economy, Stupid: George W. Bush, The GOP’s CEO. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
Berenger, Ralph, ed. Global Media Go to War: Role of News and Entertainment Media during the 2003 Iraq War. Spokane, WA: Marquette Books,
2004.
Friedman, Thomas. Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
2011.
Longley, Clifford. Chosen People: The Big Idea that Shapes England and America. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.
Mounk, Yascha. The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is In Danger and How to Save It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
Obama, Michelle. Becoming. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2018.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. The Attacks of 9/11—National History, Personal Memory
The resource for this activity comes from a website that gathers personal memories, videos, and photographs of the September 11 attacks. Beyond
Research Activities:
1. Ask students to browse through the written stories in the complete archive of this website, choose one, and present it to the class. Ask them to
2. Ask students to browse through the photographs collected on this website and have them choose one. (It should not be one commonly used
Group Activities:
1. Divide the class in groups of five to eight and ask them to draft the text of not more than fifty words for a memorial plaque. Have the
class reconvene and choose their favorite plaque. Have them discuss the merit of the plaque they chose.
2. Divide the class into groups and ask them to prepare arguments for and against rebuilding the World Trade Center at Ground Zero. Let
them discuss in which way the nation can do the most justice to the victims in commemoration and to history.
3. a. Divide the class into groups of five to eight and ask them to discuss how online multimedia, the way it is used on this website, changes
our memory and historical understanding of an important event. Do we understand the historical significance of 9/11 better because of it?
2. Group Debate: The Impeachment of Donald Trump
Organize the class into a debate over the impeachment of Donald Trump for crimes in office. Allow the students to form two groups, Republicans and