These are supposed to be the most American of days. The United States had a historic showing at the Winter Olympics. This year is the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. And we are at war. In normal times, each would summon national pride and unity. But they’re happening together — the rally-around-the-flag effect should be supercharged.
It’s not. At his State of the Union address last month, President Donald Trump called this “the golden age of America,” but the polls tell a different story. American optimism has slumped to a record low, and 60 percent of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track. A Pew study published March 5 found that the U.S. is the only country among 25 surveyed where more adults view their fellow citizens as morally bad than good. And the military strikes against Venezuela and Iran have produced no customary bump in approval ratings for the president.
The reason isn’t complicated. Trump has made many of the nation’s institutions and symbols his own, from putting his name on the Institute of Peace to planning a 250th anniversary fight night at the White House on his birthday. MAGA has politicized “patriot,” assigning it based on partisan loyalty rather than love of country. Meanwhile, the president has called Democratic lawmakers “traitors” and labeled them adversaries in a “war from within.” These actions undermine the capacity to rally and, more consequentially, hinder the people’s desire to. We are not a nation fighting over the flag, or even about it — only under it.
These are not accidents of polarization. They are products of a president who uses the bully pulpit to keep the country at odds. Defined in 1970 by political scientist John Mueller, the rally-around-the-flag effect follows an event with three qualities: It’s international; it directly involves the president; it must be “specific, dramatic, and sharply focused.” But the effect lessenswhen the crisis isn’t presented to the public; there’s little bipartisan support; the White House spins the events poorly. The effect was Trump’s for the taking, and the administration fumbled it.
But the problem runs deeper than tactics — Trump’s path to the presidency depended on both partisan and racial identity politics. Research has shown that White Americans with a strong racial identity are more likely to identify with the Republican Party and that racial attitudes are deeply embedded in partisan conflict. In Trump’s three runs for president, on average, 84 percent of his voters were White. When this is bundled with the perception that White citizens are more American, the mix makes for a politics that is hyper-partisan and resentful — attributes that work against rallying and calls for unity.
But even if Trump had played his hand perfectly this year, the nation is in no mood to rally under his presidency. Americans have become a people who feel better about the country more when the person or party they prefer is in power. Democrats’ pride in being American dropped during Trump’s first term and rebounded after Joe Biden won the White House. Political scientists examined MAGA’s evolution into a movement offering social status and belonging more than policy, and they found it was fueled by people who feel denigrated and who lay claim to national symbols as a restoration of lost honor.
Even under ideal conditions, people who see their neighbors as enemies in a nation where patriotism is partisan will find it impossible to rally around symbols — even national ones — that one side has draped itself in.
The things that often supersede our differences — such as sports — have also become another place for Americans to argue about politics. At the Winter Olympics, the U.S. men’s and women’s hockey teams rallied to win gold medals in dramatic fashion. It didn’t take long for them to get caught in the political crossfire. Trump’s locker-room-style embrace of the men’s team, coupled with the women’s team declining a White House invitation, led to criticisms of the men’s patriotism and the women’s principles. At the State of the Union, Trump paraded the U.S. men’s hockey team as surprise guests. Just before excusing them, he pivoted to himself: “I got the Olympics, and I got the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and I wanted to claim the 250th, but I didn’t get away with that one. I couldn’t claim that one for myself.”
This is a problem for any nation but especially one founded on principles rather than ethnicity or religion. When partisan and racial identities are strengthened and strategically employed for personal and political gain, they cannot simply be shelved for events that typically inspire unity. The United States can win wars, celebrate gold and commemorate the nation’s founding, but if its president and politics reap rewards by sowing division, Americans are more likely to rally to the party’s pennant than around the nation’s flag.
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