Trump’s time

The new president deserves a ‘free shave’

This editorial is addressed specifically to the numerical majority of American voters who did not choose the man who will be inaugurated today as the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

The message to them is, get used to it. He is extremely likely to be in office for at least the next four years.

There was some thought at first that maybe he didn’t really want to be president — he just wanted to win the election, to make a point. That turned out to be wrong.

There is and was some thought that he might eventually be impeached. No U.S. president has yet been removed from office, and the chances that the Republican legislators who currently make up the majority in both houses of Congress would oust Mr. Trump, even if his governance of the United States turned out to be a branding operation for his enterprises, are close to zero.

Four of our presidents have been assassinated, but the security measures that the U.S. Secret Service can now employ are such that it is extremely unlikely that what happened in 1865, 1881, 1901 and 1963 could occur again. The Secret Service certainly sharpened its teeth protecting President Barack Obama, given the many threats posed against him.

Four of our presidents have died in office of natural causes, although Mr. Trump gives every indication of strong health, and those who don’t like him would probably like Vice President Mike Pence even less.

Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block, who had the habit of drawing Richard M. Nixon with a five o’clock shadow, drew a cartoon offering Nixon a free shave when Nixon was elected president for the first time in 1968. (That turned out to be misguided optimism, of course.) In spite of misgivings about Mr. Trump by many Americans, he deserves the same fresh start as he enters the White House today.