Jan 9, 2017 5 min read

The idea that Donald Trump will live in history, let alone the White House, is mind-boggling to the large number of us who remain deeply skeptical about the president-elect.

But a President Trump may be the very thing we need right now. Didn’t he give promise during the campaign of smashing the ideological steel-trap of American politics — the liberal-conservative axis that has gummed up our national affairs at least as far back as Reagan?

During the campaign Trump was the non-Reagan. Whereas the Gipper was sunny and optimistic, The Donald was dark and pessimistic. Reagan was an ideological warrior. It doesn’t appear that Trump has an ideological bone in his body. It’s impossible to say what Trump stands for. His positions change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.

So great was the Trump threat to conservative ideologues that one of the faith’s primary fire tenders, George Will, denounced the candidate and resigned from the Republican party. Alas, George remains a card-carrying conservative, in good standing.

Be that as it may, how much more difficult would it be for national, state or even local Republicans to paint Democrats as the “other” (as in, “They don’t share our values.”) even as their party’s president works with Democrats in Congress to pass a significant infrastructure bill?

Plenty hard, I’d say.

For that matter, how about if President Trump were to join a majority of Democrats and a smattering of Republicans in Congress to reform trade policy, paying closer attention to the preservation of American jobs and living standards than has been paid for the past half-century or so?

That would give the old ideological tree a shake.

The big, fat policy issue that initially animated the Trump campaign — actually, it was more an inferred hope — was embedded in the candidate’s promise to come out swinging for the middle and working classes, to narrow the income gap between them and the wealthy and super wealthy.

Trump spoke to “the forgotten men and women” of the country whose lives in far too many instances are precariously balanced between resignation and despair, and to others whose incomes are stuck in second gear through no fault of their own; automation and the exposure of high wage U.S. jobs to low wage economies in central and south America and large swathes of Asia have helped to rip a hole in the fabric of American life — a hole that Trump rushed to fill.

Over the course of the campaign, Donald Trump threw out a lifeline to these folks. He spoke to their needs, he affirmed their existence; at the same time, Hillary Clinton, who was much better on actual policy, largely ignored them.

Much was made in 2016 of the angry white voters supporting Trump. Some said racism was at work; supposedly these Trump voters hated President Obama, the first black president; or they feared that the country was barreling into a multi-cultural future; their kind was threatened with extinction.

Denying the existence of racism is fruitless; but those who voted for Hillary Clinton might check themselves before throwing that particular stone at Trumpites; racism is such a ubiquitous fact of American life that not a few Democrats/liberals/Clinton voters, one can almost be sure, are themselves racists, to one degree or another.

If racism was the defining feature of the average Trump supporter, how then does one explain President Obama’s two electoral triumphs? It is indisputably true that some of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 cast their lot with Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Having lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College by a modest margin, the Trump mandate, such as it is, is small. Still, it is clear, in light of both the Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns, that the country wants to close the sharp income disparity between the rich on one hand and the middle class and poor on the other.

The call for a shared prosperity is unmistakable. And if one assumes the Trump voter was one mad cuss this time around, imagine what four more years of stagnant wages will mean. Both Republicans and Democrats need to address the problem that bears the fingerprints of both parties. It took decades to dig this hole; it will take decades to dig out. But an earnest start has to be evident come 2020. Or else

All of that and it still mostly comes down to this: there has never been a president-elect like Donald Trump. Most of the time he’s downright scary. His war against the CIA, his infatuation with Vladimir Putin and his disdain for old allies, his threatening posture toward the news media and the courts, his embrace of authoritarian rhetoric, his disparagement of democratic norms, his everyday casual deceptions — all of these and more are red flags.

Supporters and critics alike have been awaiting Trump’s transformation into something more “presidential”; they wait in vain. What Trump is, he will continue to be.

There’s no turning back now; inauguration day looms. Of a sudden, “Ask what you can do for country” has taken on a new, maybe urgent, meaning. I’ve never in my life been fearful of what a president of the United States may do. Until now.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books -Grand Salute: “Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.”He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.