At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us, ‘how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.’

Those words — from President Trump’s first inaugural — express the sentiments that we most admire in the president being sworn to the parchment, for the second time, today. We quoted the phrasing in this space when he was first sworn. We quote the words again today to tie in the two presidencies that were interrupted by, in President Biden, a politician who promised to unify the nation and ended up pursuing a divisive course.

We’ve been struck during the run up to this historic day with a change in President Trump himself. When he acceded to the presidency for the first time, he was, understandably, a bit naive. He hadn’t expected, say, his one-on-one phone call with the Australian prime minister to be leaked verbatim to the press. The deep state ran rings around him. Even hardened newspapermen were shocked at the “resistance” that was launched at the new administration.

One of the most insidious of the tactics used against the 45th president, as Mr. Trump was then, was to suggest that he needed an adult in the room. That status was draped by the press on, say, Mr. Trump’s first state secretary, Rex Tillerson, and, for that matter, his first defense secretary, General Mattis, and his second chief of staff, General Kelly. Constitutionally, of course, it was Mr. Trump who was the adult in any room he entered.

This time around, in any event, things are different. It has become plain as he’s assembled his cabinet. Not a single one of his nominees is being presented as the adult in the room. Not because they’re lacking in adulthood. Rather because Mr. Trump is not only older but wiser than when he first entered the history books. Most — or maybe all — of his nominees are a generation younger than the 47th president to be. He is going to be the adult in the room.

The same is true, incidentally, for many, if not most of the foreign leaders with whom he’ll be in harness — or opposition — during the new term. Mr. Trump is older and more experienced than he was the last time around, and the bull in the china shop has perhaps learned his way around the aisles. There is another kind of experience that counts — the American people’s over the last four years, a record that persuaded them to turn back to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump is no longer the naif. On the contrary, he’s a politician who has reshaped one of America’s two parties and banished the other one, at least for now, to the wilderness. The program that he first unveiled roughly a decade ago — a return to enforcing the law on immigration, limited government, tax cuts, deregulation, a grasp of America’s place in the world, opposition to the cultural excesses of the left — has now twice been ratified by the electorate. 

The 47th president will take the oath not only as the author and hero of one of the great political comebacks of any age, but also as something of a survivor. First and foremost of an assassin’s bullet, which grazed his ear, inches from the brain. Another attempt on his life was thwarted at a golf course. There were the four criminal cases arrayed against him during Mr. Biden’s presidency. Mr. Trump becomes the first survivor of a new era in lawfare politics.

That may be the most enduring point. Our greatest legal sages tried to keep the president from even getting on the ballot. They mocked the notion that a president might have a degree of immunity for official acts. Yet with every gambit and charge handed up against Candidate Trump, he soared in the polls. The American people are smarter than their politicians — and President Trump’s respect for them could be the most unifying feature of his presidency.