In March 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not seek reelection. It was an admission by Johnson that his administration failed in its conduct of the Vietnam War. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, received the Democratic nomination and was trounced in an electoral landslide.

Barack Obama has criticized two Republican presidential hopefuls, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, over their stances on race relations in America.

In a podcast interview, Obama, who became the first Black US president when he was elected in 2008, said that while presenting a hopeful message on race relations was important, “that has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present”.

Scott is the only Black candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race and Haley is Indian American.

Former president Barack Obama criticized 2024 Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott as part of a “long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can make it.’”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) took a jab at former President Obama this week after the Democrat criticized the declared 2024 GOP presidential contender over his remarks about race and racial progress in the country.

“Let us not forget we are a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression. Democrats deny our progress to protect their power. The Left wants you to believe faith in America is a fraud and progress in our nation is a myth,” Scott said in a statement Thursday.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, openly eyeing a pathbreaking run for the Republican presidential nomination, came home Thursday night to the city that started the Civil War to test out themes of unity and forgiveness aimed at the current war in his party — and the divisions roiling the nation at large.

The ultimate question is whether Republican voters who embraced Donald J. Trump’s brand of us-versus-them divisiveness are ready for the themes that Mr. Scott is selling.

President Joe Biden, understanding he will have to juggle differing priorities from a divided Congress, made just a handful of new requests to lawmakers in his State of the Union address.

Biden’s speech was more about the laws he and the previous Congress enacted than what he hopes to accomplish with the one he addressed in the House chamber Tuesday night. 

But he still laid out some policies he hopes the divided Congress will address. Among the most achievable are proposals Biden calls his “unity agenda.” 

In the struggle to forge solidarity in our divided society, the Constitution is not the problem but the solution.

We are living through a moment of intense division in American public life, and it often seems like our constitutional system exacerbates our bitter conflicts.

President Joe Biden's coming visit to deep-red Louisiana is one of the few trips Biden has made to Republican states since taking office, following several trips to Democratic and swing states.

Asked how people should perceive this, the White House suggested Biden's pledge to be a president for everyone still holds.

As an American, I wish President Joe Biden every success in defeating the pandemic and getting the economy moving again. But when it comes to the dysfunction of our political system and the polarized climate generally, it’s becoming clear he’s part of the problem, not the solution.

I don’t think this is deliberate. No doubt Biden believes he’s doing right as he sees it. He’s also probably sincere about his desire to detoxify our politics by pushing for some gauzy notion of “unity.”