Halting the Nation’s Descent Will Be Difficult; Reversing the Damage Will Be Much, Much Harder.

As America moves closer to what promises to be a feverish election season, the chances of Democrats defying the odds and winning enough seats in both the Trump-redistricted House and the Senate to take control of Congress appear surprisingly good. Judging by his frantic efforts to cheat his way to victory, Trump certainly sees this as a distinct possibility.

If the Democrats do succeed, the last two years of Trump’s presidency will be a good deal rockier than his none-too-smooth first two. Winning the Senate particularly could doom any nomination that John Thune cannot ram through before January 1, 2027, and even there, with Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, and John Cornyn bitterly facing exile, totally outrageous choices will likely fail.

If Democrats do prevail, Trump will spend the rest of his term flailing about against a legislature that will take every opportunity to make his life miserable. It is thus possible that, by 2028, the Republican brand will have become sufficiently tarnished that the nation’s voters will decide to give a Democrat a chance, assuming the Democrats can resist what often seems an insatiable urge to self-destruct.

But then what?

The damage Trump has done and will surely continue to do every day he is in office will present a staggering problem to any Democrat who takes his place. (Another Republican will have no easy time of it either.) Federal agencies have been hollowed out, the tax base shrunk, and the workforce robbed of much of its low-end labor. Infrastructure has been abandoned, a bureaucracy has been replaced by a kleptocracy, and many if not most key positions have been filled by stooges and incompetents whose loyalty is to Donald Trump rather than the country. In foreign affairs, alliances have been abandoned, friends turned into enemies, and goodwill replaced by poisoned wells. This does not even include the desecration of the White House, the purge of women and people of color from the military and key civilian positions, the perversion of “patriotism,” and the replacement of the nation’s true past with history that could have been written by Jefferson Davis. Just getting Trump’s name or face off every building or document in sight will take a major effort.

All of these will need to be addressed and quickly, which will take unflagging commitment, an army of talented people, and a whole lot of money. The magnitude of the task is enormous, perhaps greater than the challenge Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933 in ending the Great Depression while warding off the lure of fascism. To even begin to restore the America we once, alas, took for granted, priorities need to be re-ordered, agencies restaffed, and alliances both foreign and domestic restored. And that assumes that the war with Iran will have ended.

To enable government agencies that perform functions that their absence or downgrading have made clear are essential, the hacks and deniers need to be ushered out and real experts brought in to replace them. Because they will first be required to clear the rubble that Trump will happily leave behind, the doctors, lawyers, scientists, policy experts, diplomats, fiscal managers, and many others will need to be of even greater ability than these jobs required in the past.

But before government can be reconstituted, there is another, more onerous obstacle that needs to be overcome.

Loss of trust.

After a second four years of Donald Trump, it will be very difficult for anyone, either in the United States or overseas, to again believe that we will do what we say we will do or even hold to the values we are so fond of bragging about. The Trump administration has made it very clear that it ascribes to Lenin’s old maxim, “Promises are like pie crusts; made to be broken,” and convincing friend and foe alike that this doctrine is no longer national policy will be a tough sell.

As such, even if the money were made available to pay top men and women competitively, no sure thing in itself, who in their right mind would eschew the private sector to take a job that could be eliminated in another four years?

And reversion to Trumpism is hardly a remote possibility. Unless their defeat is unequivocal, those considering government service will likely conclude that Trump’s minions were turned out of office not because they betrayed the nation’s ideals, or conducted themselves with gleeful sadism—to say nothing of rampant stupidity—or followed a leader who may well have been mentally ill, but simply because one-time Trump voters did not get what they thought they deserved. If Democrats fail to win big, the victory will be seen as not because the nation has decided that the time has come to put aside self-interest for a higher purpose, but rather because the Democrats will have made the same promises Republicans had failed to deliver on.

In that case, if Democrats do not themselves satisfy these demands, 2030 and 2032 could see the country go right back to the same sort of leadership it had rejected two or four years before. While it is true that no one can be as detestable or as inept as Donald Trump…one hopes…if the appalling national ethos he has fomented prevails, there would then be little chance for the sort of rebirth so many Americans hope for.

The real problem, therefore, is not with government but with the electorate. Americans are very fond of evoking periods of great sacrifice and national pride, extolling films such as “Saving Private Ryan,” but for tens of millions of our citizens, sacrifices should be made only by others and there is nothing to be proud of unless you can further your own interests at someone else’s expense. Anyone who thinks that is too harsh a judgment need only to look at the lack of outrage among conservatives to Trump’s response to the wildfires in Canada. Other nations sent help. Trump tried to extort money.

But there are also tens of millions of Americans for whom sacrifice is not a sucker play and who are eager to do what they can to attain national renewal. They were far too passive in 2024, many refusing to believe the unthinkable could actually come to pass. As subsequent elections and mass outpourings, such as the No Kings rallies, have demonstrated, many have traded in passivity for activism. (How about a “No Stooges Day” heading into the midterms?) With the road ahead so perilous, the country needs each one of them to continue to step up if the United States is to restore confidence domestically, convince former allies of our sincerity, and banish the hate-filled, greed-inspired legacy of Donald Trump once and for all.