“Great presidents are unifiers mostly in retrospect,” the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. told Politico's political writer John Harris in the 1990s. Most great presidents, Schlesinger later wrote, “divided the nation before reuniting it on a new level of national understanding.”
Trump will never have the popularity ratings to match his large footprint on American history. His opponents and their dominance of the national media have made that next to impossible. For the last ten years, Democrats have demonized, vilified, and hysterically exaggerated the dangers of electing Donald Trump president. And yet he won every contested state and got a near-majority of voters in the 2024 election.
Many Democrats saw his victory in 2016 as a fluke. Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign, plus the Russians, the Russians, the Russians. The American people really didn't elect Donald Trump. It was a mistake.
John Harris, no friend of Donald Trump, refers to him as a "force of history."
"He is someone with an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not and forge powerful, sustained connections with large swaths of people in ways that no contemporary can match. In other words, He is a force of history."
Trump's opponents can no longer try to marginalize him by pushing him out of the mainstream. Trump is not only part of the mainstream now, but he is also setting the agenda. When he says "Jump!" his opponents are answering "How High?"
Like other large presidents, Trump has been a communications innovator and exploited technological shifts more effectively than rivals. In that sense, Trump’s use of social media recalls Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mastery of radio, and John F. Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s mastery of television — even as his banter and insults don’t aspire to anything like traditional presidential eloquence.
One more signature shown by the most consequential presidents: Uncommon psychological toughness. Have you ever known someone who was facing legal hurdles? In many cases, even if people ultimately win the case, they end up being consumed and shrunken by the searing nature of the experience. Imagine running for president amid huge civil suits, criminal prosecutions, and even felony convictions — then emerging from this morass as a larger figure than before. No one needs to admire the achievement to recognize that Trump is possessed by some rare traits of denial, combativeness and resilience.
Trump has shown himself to be as resilient as anyone who has been elected president. Not just his bounce back from the legal ordeal he endured but his remarkable recovery from an attempted assassination attempt marks him as an extraordinary leader. Perhaps Lincoln had to endure more sustained psychological pressure over four years of the Civil War, but in the white-hot pressure cooker of a modern presidential race, Trump endured and won.
"For the first time," Harris states, "he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era."
Think of the presidents after Ronald Reagan, the last world-historical figure to dominate American politics. George H. W. Bush was a one-term president who made no mark on American history save getting the U.S. embroiled in 40 years of Middle East wars. Bill Clinton was a small, manipulative man, outshone by his grasping, conniving wife. George W. Bush presided over a world-changing event and then flubbed the response. Barack Obama, the first black president, presided over the near disappearance of the Democratic party at the state and local level.
Joe Biden will be seen as an asterisk, a small solitary figure in the interregnum between Trump terms. Trump towers above all of them.
But does any of this mean that Trump can be a "good" president? Can he be effective in achieving his goals? Most importantly, can he bring the nation to a new understanding of its purpose and destiny?
This is what Trump is seeking in reorienting the federal government. Ideally, the U.S. government reflects who we are as a people and our priorities. Can Trump chop it down to size and make it manageable?
It may be the last moment in history where this is possible. Given what we've seen from Trump so far, I wouldn't bet against him.
