Move Over Grover: Americans, in Giving Trump a Historic Victory, Reject the Specter Evoked by the Democrats

Move over, President Cleveland. Americans, rejecting the dark specter of President Trump evoked by Vice President Harris and Democrats, are giving him, too, a second, non-consecutive term in the White House. Now the electorate will be expecting the once and future president to be that better version of himself he promised.In his victory speech early this morning, Trump struck a positive and unifying tone. “We’re going to help our country heal.” He promised a “golden age” for America and said he “will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve.” He made no mention of Ms. Harris, who had yet to concede, but nor did he ridicule any foes.“It’s time to unite,” Trump said, “and we’re going to try. We’re going to try. We have to try. And it’s going to happen. Success will bring us together. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that. I saw that in the first term. When we became more and more successful, people started coming together. Success is going to bring us together, and we are going to start by all putting America first.”In 2016, the 45th and likely 47th president blazed his own course to commander-in-chief, the first man to get there without holding a post in government or the military. Now, he has again hacked a new path out of the political wilderness. Presidents Van Buren, Fillmore, Grant, Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt attempted comebacks. All were successful statesmen and political animals, save Grant.Trump — reviled by many, impeached twice, and beset by legal assaults — is on the brink of having done what, in 250 years, had been done only by Cleveland. Often a caricature of the roughneck at a bar at his native Queens, New York, Trump found ways to connect that Ms. Harris did not. “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible,” as he told his supporters.Cleveland, in his 1888 defeat, won the popular vote over President Harrison but lost the Electoral College. Trump lost the popular vote twice but last night claimed the prize which, if it holds, would make him only the second Republican to do so since 1988. That Trump grew his support is, in large part, due to President Biden, who now joins Harrison in this special repudiation, since Ms. Harris was weighed down by their administration’s baggage.For all Ms. Harris’s talk about “turning the page” on the “chaos” of Trump, Americans decided to go back to the future. In state after state, Trump built on his 2020 totals while, according to CNN, Ms. Harris didn’t outperform Mr. Biden’s in a single county by over three percent. This, as the network’s anchor, John King, said during their election coverage, after Trump was, following January 6, “given up for dead.”There will be a lot of finger-pointing by Democrats as they move from the first stage of grief, denial, to the fifth, acceptance. Mr. Biden, who did only one campaign event for his replacement, will bear the brunt of the second stage, anger. But he will remind the party that he was forced to drop out and that Ms. Harris underperformed his 2020 totals with Black, Hispanic, and working-class voters, key Democratic constituents.Expect this election to flip the old cliché. Failure has many fathers while victory has just one. How much Trump can transcend this moment will, in my opinion, go a long way to determining his success. He would be well served by someone in the role of a Roman triumph, whose job was to whisper into the ear of victorious generals, “Memento mori,” a reminder that for all the cheers, they, too, were mortal.An American example comes from President McKinley on the evening of his first election in 1896. After people flooding the governor’s home at Canton, Ohio, to congratulate him went home, McKinley was ready to turn in for the night. But first, he and his wife, Ida, knelt at the bed of his mother, Nancy.Mother McKinley wrapped her arms around the couple. “Oh God, keep him humble,” she said. Over and over, she repeated this simple prayer. Christian voters, including largely Catholic Hispanics and Muslims whom Trump thanked for his victory, might put in a similar request. “Humble” may be the only thing that the man who brands his name in gold on skyscrapers has never been called, but this victory is all about change.Trump doesn’t accept that he was defeated on the square in 2020; so, he didn’t do the soul searching that, say, President Nixon did after losing a squeaker to President Kennedy in 1960. One indication that he may make a course correction is that, in interviews, he has discussed the bad choices he made to fill major posts in his first administration when he was so new to Washington, he’d never even slept there overnight.It’s unlikely that Trump will choose anyone who plays the role of Roman triumphs, reminding him that all glory is fleeting. He may, however, have learned to pick people who can govern and won’t leak. That so many of his preferred candidates lost in the 2022 midterms led to him staying out of primaries to a large extent.The most high-profile candidate Trump backed, Bernie Moreno, defeated the incumbent, Senator Brown, in Ohio. That race alone was enough to flip Senate control, and the Republicans gained others. Control of the House remained in the balance when Trump spoke but, in a buoyant mood, he declared that the GOP would maintain control.Like Godzilla, to whom I likened Trump in a previous column, the 45th president has come back after being declared dead. He overcome every attack, insult, and self-inflicted wound. Now it’s up to him to be the version of himself that the nation sent back to the Oval Office, not the demon of Democratic ads. Do that, and he’ll be more than a footnote alongside Cleveland. He’ll be a success, and all Americans will succeed with him.

Move Over Grover: Americans, in Giving Trump a Historic Victory, Reject the Specter Evoked by the Democrats

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