A new era dawns

Donald J. Trump promises a new style of governance - muscular, angry, and unwilling to accept woke lies. Everyone agrees Washington is broken. We're about to find out if he's the one to fix it.

Quick confession: I’m normally a decisive writer.

But last week, as I tried to write a fitting eulogy for Joe Biden’s dead presidency, my fingers failed me. What can I tell you that you don’t already know? That he was a hypocrite and a liar; that he and his minions disregarded the Constitution when it stood in their way; that his self-regard grew as his physical and moral stature shrank;

Most of all that his belief that despite his obvious decline he deserved a second term - one which would have ended when he was 86 - was both delusional and disrespectful to the country he pretended to serve.

Whew. That’s done then. What comes next?

Donald J. Trump comes next.

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(As honest as I know how to be. With your help.)

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And Trump’s spree of executive orders yesterday make clear that his second term will not be like his first.

In 2017, he had plenty of ideas but no real sense of his power; this time he has both. That would-be assassin’s bullet, or the lawfare he faced in 2023 and 2024, or both, have focused him and sharpened his anger. Eight years ago, he was still mostly an entertainer, in it for the luluz, as the kids said.

Not this time. This time he clearly has a keen desire to fulfill the vows he made during his campaign.

This time he means to leave a mark.

At his best, Trump echoes Ronald Reagan.

Like Reagan, Trump wants a muscular America, an America that is secure and safe at home and leads abroad by example rather than by puffery or toothless international treaties like the climate change agreement. He wants entrepreneurship to thrive (even if it is not entirely clear how a business-first government will square with J.D. Vance and the new Republican populism).

Most of all, Trump believes that a nation’s first responsibility is to its own citizens - not poor and unskilled migrants who will come by the millions and bankrupt it if they’re allowed to do so, and not to other countries that will gladly watch us wreck our economy in a fantasy of decarbonization so they can build more factories for themselves.

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That’s the good news.

Of course, Trump’s vision is darker than Reagan’s too, in ways I don’t like. Reagan spoke - and truly believed - in “Morning in America.” Trump seems to think it’s night, and his job is to turn on the floodlights and show us the creatures scurrying in the dark.

Reagan became famous as an actor, but he came to the presidency after governing California; he knew that democracy requires compromise.

Trump, as a chief executive (and, yes, very successful entertainer), is used to having his wishes fulfilled, his orders followed. In that first term, they were frequently deliberately blocked. The lesson that Trump seems to have learned is that he needs to play rough and never back down.

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(The Chicago Way. Also, be careful with baby strollers on big marble staircases.)

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Of course, it’s possible he is simply posturing, playing to his base.

But Trump’s decision Monday night to pardon the vast majority of the Jan. 6 rioters, even those who committed violence, suggests otherwise. I wish he hadn’t done so. The people who were merely hanging around on that ugly day probably shouldn’t have been prosecuted, and even the ones who just wandered inside probably didn’t know what they were getting into.

But hitting cops is not okay - not during a Black Lives Matter protest and not at the United States Capitol.

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(Trusting you enough to tell you what I really think.)

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My thinking this, and saying it aloud, is probably one reason that I can’t get an interview with him. The loyalty tests are not a great look either, though, again, I understand what’s driving him.

So.

We have a new President now. I voted for him knowing I wasn’t going to agree with everything he did, knowing we needed change and Kamala Harris meant more of the same, only with an extra helping of diversity, equity and inclusion. And after only one day it’s clear we’re going to get it.

Let’s hope for a good four years.