After one year

 Today, for the first time in our history, the United States has a president who has no understanding of the political and intellectual principles that have always defined our nation and that enabled us to survive the great crises of 1861-5 and 1929-45.  The government that the Framers bequeathed to us demands respect for established procedures and precedents.  As our first presidents repeatedly reminded us, that government depends upon mutual respect--which Lincoln maintained even during the Civil War--and upon a commitment to principles bigger than any of us as individuals.  And from the beginning we have tried, with intermittent success, to rely upon known facts to analyze what threatened our nation and how to meet that threat.  Both Lincoln in 1861-5 and FDR in 1940-45 based the great wars they fought on the need to preserve democracy--Lincoln to defend it against the domestic threat of rebellion and FDR to protect it from lawless regimes abroad.  In both of those cases the enormous physical and material sacrifices the nation made to secure victory reaffirmed faith in our institutions, and after 1945 in particular that victory led to measures that improved the lives of tens of millions of Americans, not least in recognition to the sacrifices they had made.  When William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote The Fourth Turning in the mid-1990s they expected to see a similar drama enacted in the next 20 years or so. That has not happened and it looks to me as if it will not happen.

More than any other man ever elected President, Donald Trump has devoted his life to the pursuit of great wealth, fame, and influence.  The first few decades of his business career revealed him to be a man of very erratic judgment, but he compensated for his failures by creating a robber baron persona with the help of an ever-cooperative media.  He built a internationally well-known brand, and that seems to have allowed him to escape ruin during several bankruptcies because he convinced his creditors that his enterprises would do better if they remained associated with his name.  He had developed the technique that he has relied upon as president: reshaping reality with a steady stream of boasts of his own greatness that kept the myth of Trump the great businessman alive.  He insisted that he could do things that lesser men never could.  In the 2000s, when he had exhausted most of his credit with the financial community, he brilliantly turned to television, where he could play the role of managerial genius in a safe environment.  Full disclosure: I think that I watched the first two seasons of The Apprentice myself.  He never impressed me as a manager at all, but he was evidently an effective  performer.

The Apprentice also flattered Trump's self image of omnipotence and invincibility--the characteristic that now defines his second presidency.  He and his devoted team identify and solve every problem saving the nation, including some that we did not know that we had.  He maintains this image, of course, by creating an alternative reality based upon alternative facts.  Our now-stagnant economy is growing at astonishing rates, our 2.7 percent inflation doesn't exist, we enjoy unprecedented respect around the world, huge investments are flowing into the United States, etc., etc., etc.  At the personal level this technique suggests some emotional desperation, a complete inability to admit failure of any kind.  It must be very exhausting to be Donald Trump, and the strain is showing.  

Trump has always loved publicity, and early in his career as a builder he impersonated a publicist to plant favorable stories about himself in major media outlets.  He still has a symbiotic relationship with the media--including his most bitter enemies within it--as shown by its newest obsession, the gift that keeps on giving, the Epstein files.  Our leading newspapers turn out a steady stream of stories about Trump policies going badly and setbacks in the federal courts, reflecting their unshakable belief that someone so at odds with everything they believe simply cannot succeed.  They are not, however, a real threat to his power.

Tariffs rank with illegal immigration as Trump's highest, most sincere policy priorities.  He sees the federal government as his own corporation and cannot resist taking advantage of the revenue-raising opportunities that tariffs provide.  Tariffs and the threat of tariffs are also helping his minions arrange investment deals, which if they bear fruit will surely benefit some of his political allies.  Trump's crypto sales are a new and unrivaled means of turning his brand into cash.  Yet the tariffs have already had disastrous impact upon some economic groups, led by farmers, and they may have more.  They must contribute to inflation which is a real problem.  While our major institutions have obviously failed to convince one-half of the American people that Trump is irretrievably evil, our voters will never surrender their constitutional right to punish their political leadership for poor economic performance.  That remains the most powerful dynamic in American politics, and November's off-year elections showed that it is alive and well in red states and blue states alike.  Yet a Democratic victory in the House elections eleven months from now will only create more chaos in Washington, and new impeachment resolutions will not do any good.  And if Trump's health failed him, it's hard to believe that J. D. Vance would reverse any of his policies. 

Trump's rise is more of a symptom than a cause of our national calamity.  The degradation of our public life, the irresponsibility of our media,  the decline of our educational system, and above all the decades-long assault upon authority of all kinds have combined to make him possible.  Lincoln and FDR led the nation through great crises by mobilizing it to solve enormous problems: disunion and slavery in Lincoln's case, and economic crisis and world war in Roosevelt's.  Our leadership has repeatedly failed to rally the nation to solve our own economic and political problems, and Trump now denies that any economic problems exist.  He has risen to the presidency twice because he knew how to take advantages of our society's weaknesses.  We do not know how, and when, they will be overcome.  It is probably too late for another Lincoln or FDR to reverse these trends, even if one were on the horizon.  The  heroic period in US history that began with FDR and lasted through Reagan is definitely over--but it still belongs to our heritage, and always will.