“When terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, they provoked a response that, seen from today’s perspective, seems remarkable: The country immediately united across every political and ideological divide,” the Wall Street Journal reports.“Within three days, the House and the Senate approved by a combined vote of 518 to 1 a sweeping measure endorsing the use of force against anyone deemed responsible for the attacks. In a Wall Street Journal poll taken at the time, 82% said they approved of the job being done by President George W. Bush, who hadn’t even won the popular vote in the election that brought him to office just months earlier. Almost three-quarters of Americans said that despite the attacks—or maybe because of the united response to them—the country was on the right track. In many ways, America was at its best.”“Alas, that 9/11 unity didn’t last.”“As it turned out, the events of that day also sowed the seeds for much of the discord and disillusionment that have plagued the American political system in the quarter-century since.”