Keller @ Large: We're Not All On The Same Team

BOSTON (CBS) - Wasn't that nice Wednesday to see prominent Democrats congratulating President-elect Trump and vowing to work collaboratively with him?

It was bouquets all around as Hillary Clinton said she hoped Trump would be "a successful president for all Americans" and that we "owe him an open mind and a chance to lead." And President Obama couldn't have been nicer, saying that "we are all on the same team."

This is good manners in action, and that is as it should be. And this post-election wave of good feeling and unity should last until… oh, about three o'clock this afternoon maybe?

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.

Remember what happened after 9/11, a bipartisan turnout of members of Congress on the Capitol steps singing "God Bless America," President Bush vowing not to use the war on terror as a political issue? Right around the same time Bush was saying that, Karl Rove was proposing using that war as the centerpiece of the GOP campaign strategy in 2002. And by the end of those midterm elections, polls showed partisan polarization was worse than ever.

Fourteen years later, it's well beyond partisanship.

We're polarized by race, by gender, by religious practice, by culture and geography.

Under the corrosive guidance of the baby-boomers – the "me" generation – we are becoming a nation of selfish, smug ideologues certain of our rectitude and the evil of those who dare disagree.

"All on the same team"?

Come on, Mr. President.

We're not even playing the same game.

Listen to Jon's commentary: