It's difficult to recall another time when the entire world was engulfed in crisis and potentially on the brink of international conflict.

American political leadership failed to find some means to show we all care for the good of the nation more than knocking off political opponents.

We ourselves have always sought the weaknesses in other nations in order to realize military and/or political benefits.

So what’s different today?

The vitriol of this political campaign against a sitting president goes against most of history, given the fact this president cannot avoid the leadership demands of extremely dangerous international realities…regardless of his domestic popularity or lack thereof.

In fact, the word “hatred” would hardly be too strong for the attacks of those in the Republican leadership and their minions around the country.

Do not mistake this analysis as some promotion for opponents to see President Obama as the hero of this or any other century, BUT, it was the same Republican leadership that once very correctly berated then Senator Obama who flew to Iraq to meet with American field generals during that conflict. Their strong public words were:

“We only have one president at a time.”

And that was at a time when President George W. Bush was struggling both to justify the Iraq invasion and to find some means for success as we were deploying, redeploying and redeploying thousands of men and women with resulting record military suicides and other dangerous results. So bad were the realities, orders had gone out to avoid televising the arrivals of hundreds of coffins for those killed in battle.

To be sure, public debate was strong, and, lacking any coherent message suggesting danger to the United States, the debate raged on but never with the kind of hatred for the president currently part of the opposition strategy that encourages our enemies, whoever they may be.

The morning after the Republicans were victorious in retaking the House of Representatives, it might have been lost that the Republican leaderships of both Houses declared they had only two missions: to do all necessary to undermine the President and frustrate anything and everything the Democrats might advance, suggesting the elections had given the victors the power to do both.

Even though I called that conduct a “Victory Without the Pride,” it would have been difficult to accord those actions as really dangerous to our international reputation as the current actions are without qualification. But it did lack statesmanship and would have been true had the Democrats tried the same thing.

Now it is not merely different, it is dangerous.

There is nothing that should frustrate the exercise of free speech in one more energetic political election campaign. We expect it. On the other hand, while contestants at Congressional, state and local elections fight hard against each other, it would be not merely seemly but critical that the national leaders of both parties find some means to show the world that, when the chips are down, we are truly a “united” collection of states in defense of the nation.

I have had enough years of experience working the Washington and international scenes to know how naïve that might seem to the most partisan. But, when I, along with millions of others, put on the uniform of one service or another, I did not swear allegiance to a political party, only the nation. It might be useful were those currently sounding as if the enemies are our own citizens and the sitting president not to be followed….it might be useful and critical.

Of course such commitments might require some heavy duty power bidding, but, then, what would be so bad or new about that?

What would be new and powerful would be the confirmation of the Republicans’ own very legitimate sermon to an Illinois Senator some years ago about how many heads of the American nation are in existence at any one time.

The question is whether we are in fact mature and loyal enough to stand that tall when it means so much as it does today.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.