https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-tru ... _lead_pos1
Donald Trump’s Third Presidential Life
The election is his to lose. Can he govern better if he wins?
By The Editorial Board, July 17, 2024
When Donald Trump walks onstage at the Republican convention in Milwaukee on Thursday, it will be a remarkable moment—for him and for history. The GOP has nominated Mr. Trump for President for the third time, matching only Richard Nixon in Republican Party history. Love or hate him, it is a rare political achievement. More relevant for the current moment, he has also been granted a chance at what amounts to a third presidential life. How will he use it?
Mr. Trump’s first life was his surprising surge to the nomination and then a narrow, almost accidental victory in 2016. He made many mistakes in his first year, not least setting up a chaotic White House and failing to fire FBI director James Comey on his first day in office. But he also had successes, such as tax reform and judicial appointments.
His second life was the unrelenting siege against him by the press and Democratic Party. The GOP lost the House in 2018, as voters rejected the political tumult of his first two years. Mr. Trump was impeached, lost to President Biden, then lost the Senate, then refused to accept the election results. The riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and his disgraceful attempt to block the counting of electoral votes led to a second impeachment and what looked to be the end of his career. We certainly thought so at the time.
***
Yet here he is now, back at a new political peak and more in control of the GOP than he has ever been. How did he do it?
One answer is his sheer tenacity and resilience, and a refusal to accept either blame or defeat after any setbacks. He changed the Jan. 6 narrative among Republicans simply by insisting that he and the rioters had done nothing wrong. He was helped by political polarization and the squandered credibility of the media with its partisan hostility and false Russia collusion narrative.
Mr. Trump has also been aided, time and again, by his Democratic opponents. The more Washington’s elites loathed him, the more his supporters clung to him. Then as he ran for election again, Democrats tried lawfare to disqualify him rather than let the voters decide.
Democrats tried and failed to ban him from the ballot. They indicted him four times, which made Republicans more likely to support him in the primaries. The final Democratic mistake, which could be their undoing this year, was not seriously contesting an 81-year-old President for their nomination. Mr. Biden imploded in debate in June, and now Mr. Trump is ahead in nearly every poll.
As Ben Carson, the former Trump Housing Secretary, put it with some convention hyperbole in his speech on Tuesday: “First, they tried to ruin his reputation and he’s more popular now than ever. And then they tried to bankrupt him and he’s got more money now than he had before. And then they tried to put him in prison and he’s freer and has made other people free with him. And then last weekend they tried to kill him and there he is over there alive and well.”
***
Thus does Mr. Trump’s third presidential life beckon as he prepares to speak to the country from Milwaukee. The drama is compounded by his near-assassination less than a week ago. Some who have spoken to him say he’s a changed man.
“He believes that God has given him another opportunity. He believes that God spared his life and that he is a—I’m not sure if spiritual is the word or the adjective. I’m not sure if it’s more contemplative. But I do know that he is a different man,” Florida Rep. Maria Salazar told the press. Late life conversions are rare, especially in politics, but you never know.
Second presidential terms are rarely successful, and Mr. Trump would be an immediate lame duck in January. But then a large enough victory that brings along a GOP House and Senate would give him more legislative running room than most recent second-termers. The biggest question is what he learned from his first term that he’d do differently.
One good omen is that this time he ran a much more disciplined primary campaign that won with ease despite strong competitors. He has also been unusually restrained of late, letting Democrats fight among themselves and avoiding petty spats with other Republicans. His invitation to Nikki Haley to speak at the convention was an important gesture to appeal to her suburban voters.
One risk, and it’s a big one, is that the Trump GOP no longer has a political philosophy beyond what is in the former President’s head. The party’s economic platform is a contradictory mix of tax cutting and tariff raising. Mr. Trump wants to unleash animal spirits but named a running mate who supports union leaders more than business employers. He wants to end foreign wars but has offered no specific ideas for how to do it. We’ll know Mr. Trump’s policies when we see them.
The other risk is if Mr. Trump pursues an agenda of retribution. If he does, his second term will quickly devolve into trench warfare and polarization, a probable GOP wipeout in the midterms, and another impeachment. But if he means what he has said that “success” in office is retribution enough, he has a chance to govern better. We’ll get an important signal with what he says on Thursday night.