Trump the vandal.

There will not be a return to normal.   Trump changed America. 

He changed Americans.

There has been a vandal in the house. Voters chased the vandal out, but the damage is done. We are a nation of vandal survivors. We are different now. We know that political vandalism is a policy that works.

Cleanup after the vandal will be hard because the country has gotten accustomed to vandalism. The vandal also changed the people who chased him out. They are coarsened -educated--by the experience. To fight one you need to become one.

The Constitution's grand design to stop self-government from becoming lawless tyranny was checks and balances. Ambition would counter ambition. It doesn't work well to stop a politician as talented as Donald Trump. The founders understood the danger of a bold man of action claiming to govern lawlessly on behalf of the popular will and thought the ambition of House Members and Senators would restrain a demagogue. We saw, though, that a president with enough popularity will not be checked by either body. He delivers what a loyal block of voters want, he dislikes who they dislike, and he says things that ring true to them. 

Trump isn't the symbol of virtue. He symbolizes the power that comes from shameless lack of self restraint. He does what he wants and nobody can stop him. He vandalized the norms of the presidency, and does it without apology. There is something heroic about that.  We elect to office generals who win wars.

The real check on Constitutional vandalism is the self restraint and sense of honor and shame of people in office. Trump has no apparent sense of hypocrisy or the need for consistency. That is his superpower. No shame. He defends the indefensible, asserts things which his own appointees say aren't true.

 

Trump does not demand good government. He demands personal loyalty. Trump commands attention, and gets it.  Democrats complain Republicans are "enablers" of Trump. They need to be. The public demands it. 

Democrats have fought the battle against Trump and paid the traditional price. They have enabled people who want them to become more like their enemy. Biden himself is oriented toward restoring norms of bipartisanship and institutional power of the Congress to check the president. He is a Senate veteran. He is an institutionalist. Biden--just look at him and hear him--is obviously not a bold, action-oriented leader. Trump called him Sleepy Joe. Isn't that exactly the corrective action America needs, the full oscillation of the pendulum away from Trump?

Yes, but it won't matter. Trump caused Americans to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of the power of lawless executive power. Republican saw that it worked. It was popular. It fits the current media environment. Amid the muddle of Congress with all its debating and compromising and procedures, there was Trump, ignoring all the fussing. He was on center stage and set the agenda, exercising power fearlessly and ruthlessly. 

Sleepy, bi-partisan Joe is already getting pressure from the left to duplicate Trump. Restraint is weak, for losers. If a president does less than he can get away with, then he isn't really performing for the team. As Trump said, when you are president you can do anything you want. Anything. The laws don't apply. The goalposts of what is possible have moved, and therefore the goalposts of what is expected have moved. It cannot be done legislatively so it will need to be done with the same tool Trump used, executive power.

The real division within the left was not evident in the campaign. They unified to get rid of Trump. Now both the moderates and the left supposedly have power. The left wants action. The institution of checks and balances and self restraint were shown to be meaningless, and therefore a politician who sacrifices a policy opportunity in service to norms and traditions is a sentimental fool. 

Biden-the-candidate was relief from the manic Trump presidency, but he will find himself misplaced and uncomfortable as an officeholder. He will want to make-nice and re-establish the expectations of the old system of senatorial courtesies. Too late. Republicans and Democrats both ate the fruit. 

Republicans will want an all out fight. So will Democrats.

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