He riled up Republicans in 2016 with a promise of remaking their world.
But he couldn’t deliver.
He had overpromised.
Rather than speak to his supporters and tone down their expectations, he kept up with the unrealistic notions.
Tweeting was a way of avoiding the reflection necessary to engage in a dialogue with the opposition. But he couldn’t muster the political courage.
So he tweeted some more. Maybe he reasoned that keeping his followers entertained would suffice. It didn’t.
The famous Wall was a distraction. It never got built, but there are patches of it, here and there, like relics in a battlefield.
Make America Great Again was a bust.
In this age of growing interdependence you need allies. But he couldn’t muster the discipline and forethought.
Still he kept stirring up partisanship, fostering divisions amongst Americans and eluding the dialogue that sits at the center of any attempt to build bridges amongst ourselves.
In foreign policy he could not stand up to Putin. He could not say to the Russian dictator ‘do not meddle in our elections.’
And so Trump’s character flaws mounted and mounted.
There was that one time when a female staffer in his administration had quit and then criticized him. He answered by calling her ‘a dog’.
And then, to crown his history of misjudgments, he incites a crowd to march on Capitol Hill on January 6th. Testimony emerged during the congressional hearings on the matter that he wanted to personally lead the assault on the capitol, to disrupt the electoral ballot counting.
His own staff had urged him to not proceed with his intentions. He even tried to coerce his vehicle’s driver to take him there. But the man objected.
In the end, he had to accept that his administration had been a failure. But it’s been rough getting there.
He may have started to accept reality but a side of his still fights it.
Most painful of all was that he had a chance to make a difference but he botched it.
He has trouble living with that.
In the face of events, sane Republicans recognize what a disaster Trump has been for the party. But it will take time to process. They are now looking in the mirror and acknowledging that they did elect him and cheered him on. Eventually, those sane Republicans will find their truth and Trump will not get the nomination for president he still hopes for.
His time has passed and he has to live with his lament, the opportunity to lead that was botched and botched badly, because he dared not think of all Americans.
Sadly, he will go down as the worst Republican president ever.
He knows it and it hurts.
Sane Republicans’ reckoning with themselves will require time, time to relearn to trust their judgment, which is why I believe they will not win the next presidential election.
If Biden chooses not to run, that election will belong to a woman, and the woman will be from the democratic party.
Maybe it will be Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar or Cortez Masto, or another person yet to emerge.
And history will move us on.
Oscar Valdes, medium.com, anchor.fm, buzzsprout, apple and google podcasts.
