“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”
The
ratification of the Constitution, H. W. Brands, one of Franklin’s
biographers, writes, marked the conclusion of “the revolutionary period
in American history” and the climax of Franklin’s improbably long public
life. What ratification could not do is guarantee the Constitution’s
endurance and health. That is the constant work of citizens,
collectively and individually, and Franklin’s weary caution remains
essential—particularly now, with the Inauguration of Donald Trump as the
forty-fifth President of the United States.
Since
Election Night, as the arrow of electoral favor wandered from Hillary
Clinton to Trump and stayed there, Americans have been counselled and
admonished, by voices sincere and mocking, earnest and derisive, that
despite losing the popular ballot by three million votes, despite every
extenuating and unnerving circumstance, “Donald Trump is our President
now.” “He must be given a chance.” “We are all Americans.” And so on.
Under normal circumstances, there is truth in these civic homilies. In a
divided country, no side is going to win every election.
But
how can these circumstances count within the bounds of normal? Many of
those same soothing voices allowed that, sure, Trump had been full of
outrageous abandon as a campaigner, he’d say just about anything, you
know the Donald; and yet, they argued, the gravity of office would soon
occur to him, settle and focus him, make a serious, tolerant man of him.
Trump would surround himself with competent, knowledgeable, steady,
ethical, decent counsellors; he would plunge into his briefing books and
acquire a keener sense of the issues and the world; he would recognize
the incompatibility of his business entanglements and the ethical
demands of the Presidency; he would concentrate, reach out, embrace,
replace the limited language of Twitter with the fuller rhetoric of
conciliation, complexity, and selflessness. He would become someone
else.
As if wishing would make it so.
