I am an optimist by nature, and as I look forward to 2025, I, perhaps foolishly, look forward to happy outcomes for our country. I know I could be very wrong.
In his first inaugural address, Franklin D. Roosevelt said amid some of the darkest days in our nation’s history, “Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”
Donald Trump has the potential to be a considerable president. But only if the 78-year-old intelligently refrains from doing many things he says he will, and does several things he ought to do. The more he can be steered in the right direction, the better.
If this seems utterly naïve, consider NAFTA, the trade agreement he denounced and threatened to scuttle when running for president. He negotiated modest changes with which Mexico and Canada concurred, renamed the thing, and took credit. True, the first term had more mainstream Republicans surrounding him. But he can do something like that with other issues.
Let’s look at his inbox.
Immigration. The country sorely needs immigration reform. There was a bipartisan bill in Congress to do just that before Trump killed it to avoid giving Joe Biden or Kamala Harris any credit. With Republican majorities in both houses, it wouldn’t need too much for Trump to launch a new bi-partisan immigration law that is fair, sensible, and manageable and put his name on it, something like the last bill but tougher on employers. He should do this before his ill-advised plan to use the military to round up undocumented aliens. If he confines deportations to hardened criminals, he’s likely to win public support. If he launches a dragnet that sweeps up those who have been here since childhood or sadistically breaks up families, he’ll run into the same legal, political, and moral morass he faced before with separating young children from their parents and caregivers.
The neo-Floridian says he wants to repeal birthright citizenship, which he calls “stupid.” The rest of us call it a constitutional right. Birthright citizenship means if you are born in the United States, even if your parents are illegal aliens, you automatically become a citizen. Birthright citizenship is embedded in the Fourteenth Amendment and was approved by the Supreme Court in 1898, and every time since, it has grappled with the issue. Even the Roberts Court is unlikely to upend it. It would take a constitutional amendment to repeal it, which won’t happen. Despite repeal being popular among the xenophobes in Trump’s MAGA base, he should drop that kick.
Loyalty. Trump’s indicated appointments are largely disappointing. Kakistocracy is defined as government by the incompetent, and he is steering the ship of state toward that port. Trump deserves his cabinet members’ loyalty within the bounds of their oath to the Constitution. In England, the cabinet takes “collective responsibility” for its decisions, and there never seems to be a problem.
But the 47th president also deserves competence and talent to get anything done. Some are unfit because of shallow experience or views outside the mainstream, rejecting both science and the rule of law. Trump, notoriously Roy Cohn’s protégé, is not wedded to his nominees and should reconsider his choices carefully. They must have the signal qualifications for high office, probity, character, seasoning, views not off the spectrum, and judgment. Remember Fiorello LaGuardia. The mayor of New York City in the Depression era when there were no Republican or Democratic ways of cleaning the streets. Nor is there a Republican or Democratic way of administering military procurement, analyzing intelligence, or accepting the findings of our great scientists and physicians. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous,” said Republican leader Mitch McConnell, himself a childhood polio survivor.
The good news is that Trump’s lack of personal loyalty makes it easier for him to get rid of failed nominees. When Trump’s hand-picked bozo Matt Gaetz withdrew his Attorney General bid after a few days, Trump made no fuss and, in a trice found in Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general, someone who ran law enforcement in the third most populous state and is experienced for the position. Trump was perfectly willing to jettison Mike Flynn in January 2021 after his national security adviser was caught lying to the vice president and others about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. That Trump reestablished ties to Flynn and pardoned him doesn’t obviate that he’s willing to rebuff those to whom he’s had close relations; it only adds more evidence to the case for his being protean. (See his fixer, Michael Cohen, becoming a sworn enemy or “Little Marco” becoming Secretary of State.) Using carrots and sticks so that Trump does the right thing is the responsibility of the rest of us. I’m not saying it’s easy, only that there’s an opportunity. Trump was unwilling to fight for a slew of cabinet members and nominees who failed him during his first term. That’s a helpful trait.
Foreign affairs. The U.S. has tremendous opportunity. We are the planet’s largest economy. Our military is second to none. Forecasts say our growth will outpace all the others. Sanctions and inept management have weakened China and Russia. Russia’s economy is teetering. China is drowning in debt. Iran is on its back foot, with its allies Hamas and Hezbollah decapitated and Israel at the ready to destroy its arsenal should it go nuclear.
A deal will be made with Russia on Ukraine if the U.S. gives ironclad security guarantees. But this cannot be a Munich redux. If history is at all instructive, Putin will readily agree to a cease-fire in place, use the time to regroup his fallen army, and come back with greater force to make Ukraine a vassal. How do we know this? Because we know Putin lies, and we know this is what he does.
Washington must unequivocally guarantee Ukraine’s security. We did when the Soviet Union fell if Ukraine gave up its nukes. They gave up their nukes, and in 2022, we failed to dissuade Putin from invading and watched helplessly as Russian tanks sped toward Kyiv. Ukraine defied expectations of a swift capitulation, and the U.S. rushed aid to the besieged nation. But under the two Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015, the United States again gave security guarantees to Ukraine, which we also failed to honor fully. It is time to provide Ukraine with an ironclad guarantee of security, either within NATO or, if that won’t wash with Putin, giving them EU membership which automatically will guarantee Ukraine security. Putin is negotiating from weakness. This would be a reasonable deal.
If we reward Putin’s aggression, it will only encourage China, Putin’s closest ally, to believe it could get away with invading Taiwan. With JD Vance and other Kyiv-bashers in the president’s inner circle, getting him to do the right thing via Ukraine will be hard. But not everyone around Trump sees the world that way. Rubio doesn’t. To the degree that Trump can be persuaded that a bad deal with Putin is a weakness, a calamity can be avoided.
Lebensraum. It’s nothing short of astounding that Trump wishes to emulate Thomas Jefferson with the Louisiana Purchase. and William Seward with the purchase of Alaska. He has said he wants to annex Canada, Panama, and Greenland. (Does this mean Denmark, the ice-packed region’s overlord, too?). It’s silly. These countries won’t sell; if they did, it would cost trillions, not billions. No wonder Trump tried to raise the debt ceiling. This is not like snapping up the GM building (which a thinly capitalized Trump lost at the end of the day) or the Empire State Building (which he also lost). There’s no Deutsche Bank to underwrite buying Canada, the second-largest country on earth, even if it wanted to appear alphabetically between California and Colorado.
Panama’s conservative President José Raúl Mulino defiantly released a video maintaining that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong” to Panama.
What Trump is saying, if he is serious, is damn dangerous. Hitler used Lebensraum to justify “expansion” to the East. Nonsensically, he compared it to the American expansion to the West. Putin used Lebensraum to justify his invasion of Ukraine. You see where that got him.
So, if the Canadians, the Panamanians, or the Greenlanders refuse to sell or the price is too high, does Trump propose to invade these countries and annex them, like the plot of the John Candy comedy Canadian Bacon?
If Trump fears our economic and military supremacy is insufficient to check Russian and China encroachments, the solution is alliances, not Lebensraum.
If he’s just blustering, which is almost assuredly the case, someone must explain that it’s not working.
Revenge Prosecutions. The MAGAs who support Trump are salivating to have his Justice Department prosecute his perceived enemies such as Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, or even the media. His “enemies list” is long and distinguished.
Can Trump be talked out of this spiteful folly? Appeals to high-mindedness might work for a different president. The deathless maxim of Chief Justice John Marshall, “We are a government of laws, not men,” probably won’t sway a convicted felon.
Revenge prosecutions without evidence are alien to our laws and way of life. (Robert Morgenthau, my boss in the United States Attorney’s Office in New York was fond of saying, “A man is not immune from prosecution just because a United States attorney happens not to like him.” But the prosecutor needs evidence.) Trump has to be convinced it’s a losing hand. False accusations and conspiracy theories won’t succeed before a federal grand jury or a motion to dismiss before a fair–minded federal judge, which most are.
Trump is transactional. He wants to “look good.” He can look outstanding if he ends the war in Ukraine on a reasonable basis, neutralizes Iran, and keeps his nonsense to talk, not action. If he wants to belittle Senator-elect Adam Schiff as “pencilneck,” he can. He needs to know that trying to arrest a U.S. Senator is a costly move. On this one, I think he can be talked off the ledge.
Historians rate Donald Trump as the worst president in our magnificent history. He now has a second chance in a term festooned by the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 and the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of our independence next year. Nothing since 2021 has inspired confidence that this term could be better than his first.
Still…we live in immensely challenging times that feature, among other things, managing climate change, harnessing AI, space travel, and reaping the rewards of new scientific and medical breakthroughs. Trump presided over Operation Warp Speed, the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s implausible under an HHS Secretary Kennedy, but Trump’s loyalties must be to himself, if not the Constitution. He’s would not want to waste his capital on some other philanderer. The force of the Business Roundtable, the American Medical Association, PhRMA, GOP self-interest, and his own ego could push Trump in some positive directions regarding scientific research.
As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.” JFK would have been appalled by his anti-vaxer nephew.
It may be a foolish optimism, but if Trump can be nudged in the right direction and convinced, he came up with the idea, as he did with the successor to NAFTA, he might not be quite the disaster so many of us rightly fear. It’s a long shot, but what is life without hope?
