The dust has not yet fully settled after last night’s debate, but today is 9/11. It’s a somber day. It should be a day that is apolitical. And for a brief moment today, it was.

As happens every year on 9/11, there was a memorial ceremony held at the site of the Twin Towers. While time has lessened the shock for so many Americans – and so many Americans have no living memory of what happened that day 23 years ago, because they were too young or weren’t even born yet – it’s fair to say that anyone over 30 years old has a memory of 9/11 around what they saw, or how they found out, or who told them about it.

For those of us who DO have crystal clear memories about September 11, 2001, it’s important to remember that it happened to ALL of us. There are not many events that are so universally unifying for a whole country. Usually (with the rare exception of Apollo 11 landing on the moon), those unifying moments involve death. In the United States, those moments include Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, and the Challenger explosion. More recently, October 7th in Israel. 9/11 stands out as not just an American event, but a global one. It was a day that transcended political lines. In 2001, we had a bitterly divided electorate and had just gone through the Bush v. Gore case that decided the presidential election on a slim margin. After 9/11, for a while, so much of that division and bickering fell away in our collective grief.

Which is why, despite the current political bickering and bitterly divided electorate, there was this brief and solemn moment of unity between rivals.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were joined by former President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were also in attendance.

Video of the ceremony shows Bloomberg getting Harris’ attention and appearing to tell her that Trump had arrived before the two opponents shook hands for the second time in the past 12 hours. Trump and Harris showed up for the 9/11 ceremony following their first debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. People in the crowd are heard shouting support for Trump after he arrived at the ceremony.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, former NYC Mayors Bill de Blasio and Rudy Guiliani, and Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., were also in attendance.

Trump, Harris, and Biden are also expected to attend the ceremony in Shanksville for the victims of Flight 93 later on Wednesday.

Everyone in that group likely has powerful and personal memories of 9/11. Donald Trump, as a native New Yorker and a businessman, saw the devastation of the city after the planes hit and the Twin Towers fell. Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer were both senators at the time, and Flight 93, if it had not been downed by the heroes on that plane, may have hit the Capitol Building. J.D. Vance was still in high school when the 9/11 attack happened (he graduated in 2003), but it would profoundly impact his life through his service in Iraq.

To their credit, and in front of the cameras, everyone behaved like adults, respecting the place and the moment on this anniversary. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris apparently left the New York ceremony early in order to get to Pennsylvania for the ceremony at the Flight 93 memorial.

President Biden & VP Harris Participate in Wreath-Laying Ceremony at Flight 93 Memorial – LIVE online here: https://t.co/ktt8BCuQ9c

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 11, 2024

Across the country, there are small moments and memorials happening in places large and small. It’s important for all of us to stop, and remember, even for a short period of time, what happened that day. It’s important for those of us with living memory of 9/11 to share those memories with those who don’t have them. It’s important for all of us to remember that there are some things that are bigger than politics.

The political divisiveness and media bias and presidential election will all still be there tomorrow. Today, we remember those we lost.

Featured image via Armelion on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license