There are a few single terms in the history of the U.S. presidency that left the country in a sour mood. We’ve had lots of partisan rancor with each election, of course, 2020 being one of the worst examples. I mean, instead, those times when people across the political spectrum felt dissatisfied, pessimistic, aggrieved, when liberals and conservatives both gazed at their country and frowned, though for different reasons. They might blame the other side for causing this or that problem, but a nebulous malaise had spread widely enough to transcend party and faction. Everyone was down, the whole country afflicted. That’s why one president lost and another came along to revive the shaky body politic.
Restore is the right verb—this is a restoration, a positive correction that will make America great again. He guaranteed it. And when he referred later to “the complete restoration of America,” he meant an emotional as well as practical recovery. Roads, bridges, and flooded/burnt landscapes need repair, and so does the American spirit, the National Character. Yes, President Trump promised to deliver wealth (“massive amounts of money pouring into our treasury coming from foreign sources”), to reclaim the Panama Canal, colonize Mars, and eliminate DEI from the federal government, but the entire list of policy measures floated on a sea of hopeful feelings.
He pledged to “act with courage, vigor, and vitality of history’s greatest civilization”—that phrase right there might explain his surge among young male voters who may not know much about the powers of government but have longed for an inspiring masculine leader to emerge. Policies are right or wrong to one group and another. Only killjoys and grievance peddlers would hear at the close of the speech, “We are going to win like never before,” and fail to smile.
The president was perfectly positioned to voice this renewal. Though he’d served before, he’s still The Outsider, free to criticize the D.C. regime. In truth, this is always the case: challengers can talk this way, incumbents can’t. Politicians in office have to claim a better America under their care, to run on their record. Whoever advised Vice-President Harris to adopt the theme of “change,” as she did for a while in August, made the kind of colossal blunder of one who never mingles with people outside the Beltway. It succeeded with ordinary Americans as well as one would expect.
Challengers can’t push the restoration theme, either, however, not unless a bitter mood actually prevails. They can’t fabricate a national ailment. If you tell people the country’s doing badly and they don’t agree, they feel manipulated. Nobody likes a whiner, and people prefer to think well of their homeland. I remember my graduate school buddies in the 1980s mocking President Reagan for his vigorous patriotism, as if it were no better than cowboy stupidity, and, though I voted for Mondale, I marveled at their blindness to the fact that the opposite of national pride, American guilt (Vietnam, Jim Crow, etc.), was an unpleasant condition.
I knew the time was ripe for another restoration when in the last two years the conversation of my liberal friends and colleagues lost the forceful edge it had in 2019–2020. At dinners and gatherings when politics came up, a soft hesitation, sometimes despair, swept in. They abhorred Mr. Trump as much as ever, but without the brash assertion of before. Their convictions hadn’t changed, only the strength of their expression. The mood was dim.
The reasons are easy to list. Crowds spilling over the border, drag queens dancing with little kids, college presidents exposed as feckless, the price of eggs, U.S. soldiers scurrying out of Afghanistan, a debilitated president ... they ate away at liberal poise bit by bit. The turn to Vice President Harris energized them. The tide of unanimity and joy last summer seemed for a time to cancel conservative pessimism about the state of things. She was liberal and attractive, and she switched positions on many issues that were proving an embarrassment for Democrats. Why did her campaign stumble and fall?
Because the mood factor wouldn’t go away. Not enough people, Democrats included, felt the joy in their own lives. The mismatch of feeling was clear on occasions of direct contact with voters; it was uncomfortable, too. I think it played a part in the vice president’s nervous laughter.
There was no unease at the inauguration or any other Trump gatherings. It is a mark of his rhetorical genius to have declared how bad our country is and make patriotic people feel nonetheless pleased by the delivery. He put American Carnage and American Greatness into the same speech, and it worked. We are beset with decay, ineptitude, and betrayal, he proclaimed, and ordinary Americans nodded, lots of them liberals. But we can rise again, he insisted, WE CAN and WE WILL, and they believed him.
I feel it already—the American mood has changed.
