Trump’s time
Inauguration Day will be unlike any we have witnessed in modern memory.
On the steps of the Capitol at 11 a.m. today, before thousands of people on hand and millions watching worldwide, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
The inauguration ceremony is a venerated ritual, a reassuring symbol for the people of this nation and for the world of a peaceful and for the most part orderly transition of power from one administration to another. It represents who we are as a people and who we aspire to be, and for that reason among others it deserves our attention and respect. We witness the new president taking the oath of office — his right hand raised and his left hand palm down on a Bible — and we see in our mind’s eye his predecessors: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, Kennedy, the two Bushes, Obama. As our forebears imagined a new beginning, so do we.
Unfortunately, this Inauguration Day is unlike any we have witnessed in modern memory. We have elected a president, we regret to say, who has shown himself to be illinformed, unprincipled and unprepared to assume the vast powers that the office bestows. Throughout a long and caustic presidential campaign and in the weeks since his election, he has been impetuous, vindictive, shallow.
Despite polls showing Trump with the lowest approval ratings since the question has been asked, we are well aware that millions of Americans do not share our concerns. For example, Chronicle reporter Ryan Maye Handy profiled this week the small Central Texas town of Jewett, 100 miles north of Houston in Leon County, a town where the local coal mine has shut down, a steel mill has cut back and most downtown storefronts are moldering and empty. The county gave Trump 86 percent of the vote, and Jewett residents are hoping and praying his election will mean more jobs, more people moving in and more customers for local businesses.
“I am just hoping to goodness that, come Friday, things get turned around right there and then,” Mayor John Sitton told Handy.
Perhaps they will. And yet the man the mayor has entrusted with his community’s future, and the nation’s, is just as likely to wreck an economy only now finding its footing. Given his ignorance of history and of policy issues foreign and domestic, he could damage our relations, trade and otherwise, with Mexico, ignite a debilitating trade war with China, contribute to economic and social chaos among our allies in Europe and, for reasons still mysterious, cozy up to a profoundly corrupt and violent autocrat in Moscow. And, yes, those faraway developments would have a way of filtering down to little Jewett.
Closer to home, Trump has shown a penchant for exploiting xenophobia, division and barely concealed racism. He has shown disdain for conflicts of interest, refuses to disclose basic financial information about himself and has larded his Cabinet with billionaires a million miles removed from the hardworking residents of Leon County. That’s not the curriculum vitae of a trusted and capable national leader.
If a Trump presidency turns out to be disastrous, we can hope that the American system of governance has the strength and resilience to serve as a counterweight. We hope our elected officials — and the president’s advisers — summon the courage to stand for principle over party. The president’s fellow Republicans will come under tremendous pressure to fall in line, to pay obeisance to the strongman in the White House. For the good of their constituents, for the well-being of this nation, they must resist.
In a few years, perhaps, Main Street in Jewett will be lined with cars and pickups. Sidewalks could be crowded with shoppers at the newest coffee shop or at a department store that has lured customers from Wal-Mart in nearby Madisonville or maybe hungry diners lining up at a new restaurant serving the best chicken-fried steak in Leon County. The nearby steel mill, turning out pipe 24 hours a day, will be hiring locals as soon as they can buy a stiff, new pair of steel-toed work boots. Oil and gas wells will be providing more work for local oil-field services companies than they know what to do with. And Jewett’s new elementary school, built to educate a bursting-at-the-seams population of youngsters, will be christened Donald J. Trump Elementary.
Along with the people of Jewett and every other Texan, along with every other American, we can hope that’s how it turns out.
We can hope.
If a Trump presidency turns out to be disastrous, we can hope that the American system of governance has the strength and resilience to serve as a counterweight.