Remember that brief shining moment when we all got along?

I don't know if there has ever been a time in my lifetime when our country was truly united.

Think about it for a minute.

We went from the Red Scare of the early '50s to the struggle for integration and civil rights in the '60s to Vietnam and Watergate in the '70s. We then had gas lines, a hostage crisis and trickle-down economics. We had more and more things that separated us in the '90s and beyond, and our political system became more and more toxic as each side started seeing the other as not just wrong but evil.

But there was one brief time, little more than a moment historically, when we came together not just as a nation but as a people. It only lasted a month or two, but it showed how we can be when we are at our best.

'We are all Americans.'

In fact, most of the world stood with us.

When terrorists took down the Twin Towers in 2001, even iconoclastic France had a front-page editorial in Le Monde that summed everything up in four words:

"Nous sommes tous Americains."

"We are all Americans."

And for that short time, we were not Republicans or Democrats, not liberals or conservatives.

We were unified in a way we probably hadn't been since World War II. I remember writing at the time that President Bush had an opportunity to be a great president and do something wonderful for the country. All he needed to do was say that this was no time for partisan politics, that we needed to stand together as Americans and that our sole purpose was healing our country by going after the people who had done this.

He could have said that tax cuts for the rich could wait, that America had never gone to war and cut taxes at the same time and it just wouldn't work.

Keith and Mick

Americans still stood together six weeks after the attacks, when New Yorkers filled Madison Square Garden to see the Concert for New York City.

The show was nearly five hours long and it was wonderful, even if most of the biggest names present weren't Americans. David Bowie opened the show and Paul McCartney finished it, with the Who, Elton John and Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richard in the middle.

The crowd cheered both Democrats and Republicans alike, and Roger Daltrey of the Who sang "Won't Get Fooled Again" without the words "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" for maybe the first time ever.

The Who

Bill Clinton was there, but the only George W. Bush in the house was the impersonation done by Will Ferrell. I don't remember, but to be fair it was probably a security thing.

If only the president had kept his sights on what really mattered -- going after Osama bin Laden and ignoring partisan politics -- so many of the fissures that had opened in our society might have been healed.

Or at least kept from getting worse.

But the people behind Bush knew how close the last election had been, and they didn't want to waste the chance to get their agenda implemented. Within a year, a massive tax cut for the rich had been rammed through Congress and the administration started gearing up for a war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with 911, but many of the people in the new administration had served under Bush's father and had been against stopping short of Baghdad in the Gulf War.

Less than 18 months after 911, with the country more divided all the time, Bush put on his flight suit and declared "Mission Accomplished."

And 11 years later, we are more divided than ever.

The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that no one likes George W. Bush.

Oh, and most people do still like McCartney, Bowie, Jagger, Richard and Daltrey.

Rock 'n' roll will never die.