What Happened To 'We're All In This Together'?

Editor's note: Nicolaus Mills is a professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of "Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower."

New York (CNN) -- In the debate over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats and Republicans now agree that failure to act will be a disaster for the country. President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner made their anxiety clear in their dueling speeches to the nation Monday night.

The problem is that beyond this shared fear, there is no consensus among the two parties on the future, no vibrant belief in the idea that we're all in this together.

It has not been possible to get both Democrats and Republicans to look carefully at what happened to the healthy financial surpluses that existed at the end of the Clinton presidency or to agree that fiscal stimulus is a historically proven remedy for jump-starting a lagging economy.

Such sharp divisions are not new to American history. In the 1830s Andrew Jackson encountered bitter opposition to his war on the Second Bank of the United States, and Theodore Roosevelt made enemies with his attacks on turn-of-the-century trusts. But equally relevant for us today is how successful America has been in overcoming the challenges it faced when there was agreement on key issues.

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