But the second occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light. For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.
Let’s quickly exhale: Great in this context is not about a subjective debate over whether he is a singularly righteous leader or a singularly menacing one. It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record. He began a decade ago by dominating the Republican Party. He soon advanced to dominating every discussion of American politics broadly. Now, his astonishing comeback after his defeat by Joseph Biden in 2020 and the notoriety of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot makes clear there are certain things he is not and one big thing he is.
He is not a fluke, who got elected initially in 2016 almost entirely because of the infirmities of his opponent. He is not someone the American public somehow misunderstands — as though Democrats and the news media have not spent 10 years forcefully highlighting the risks of his record and character.
He is someone with an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not and forge powerful, sustained connections with large swaths of people in ways that no contemporary can match. In other words:
He is a force of history.
This is something his most ardent supporters — still shy of a national majority — have never doubted but something others, myself included, have been slow to reckon with. The inaugural address and a raft of hundreds of executive orders Trump has promised for his opening days in office make it impossible to avoid.
That contest may be more effective if opponents embrace the reality that Trump has already demonstrated some familiar signatures of the most consequential presidents. Like influential predecessors, his arguments have shifted the terms of debate in ways that echo within both parties — in this case, on issues such as trade, China, and the role of big corporations.
Like other large presidents, Trump has been a communications innovator and exploited technological shifts more effectively than rivals. In that sense, Trump’s use of social media recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mastery of radio, and John F. Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s mastery of television — even as his banter and insults don’t aspire to anything like traditional presidential eloquence.
One more signature shown by the most consequential presidents: Uncommon psychological toughness. Have you ever known someone who was facing legal hurdles? In many cases, even if people ultimately win the case, they end up being consumed and shrunken by the searing nature of the experience. Imagine running for president amid huge civil suits, criminal prosecutions, and even felony convictions — then emerging from this morass as a larger figure than before. No one needs to admire the achievement to recognize that Trump is possessed by some rare traits of denial, combativeness and resilience.
About that combativeness: Could someone so zealously divisive ever join the roster of presidents who even schoolchildren can typically recite as the nation’s greatest?
“Great presidents are unifiers mostly in retrospect,” he told me. Most great presidents, he later wrote, “divided the nation before reuniting it on a new level of national understanding.”
This is the same sentiment uttered by FDR: “All our great presidents were leaders of thought at a time when certain ideas in the life of our nation had to be clarified.”
FDR also said: “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
The implications for Trump are ambiguous. He’s ready to use his second term, and second chance, to divide the nation over immigration, over foreign policy, over school curriculums that allegedly teach “our children to be ashamed of themselves, in many cases to hate our country,” and a long roster of other subjects.
What he didn’t show in his first term, or on his improbable pathway to a second, was an ability to bring these conflicts to resolution, to unite the country on a new level of understanding. This would require Trump revealing a new understanding about himself and how to use the next four years.
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