I was rummaging through my old columns looking for something profound and timely to bring to today’s political discussion. The missus has thoughtfully preserved them at kenferries.com . So much for the plug. Anyway, while I am still looking for something profound in the 241 pages worth of past commentary, I did find that the column I was thinking about writing today had already been written and appeared in print back on October 13, 2016, on the eve of the infamous 2016 Presidential Election.

In it, there was an extensive quotation from the very first of these occasional columns that appeared on September 17, 2015: “Donald Trump? Really? Is this the best we can do? Is our national political process so bankrupt that bombast can pass as rational political discourse, and a huckster can pass as a serious contender for the presidential chair previously occupied by the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or even Ronald Reagan?”

History has proven that not only could such a candidate become the nominee of his party, but, by the hair on his chinny chin-chin, become the president of these United States, and take total control of one of the country’s two major political parties.

When The Donald was still the punchline of innumerable jokes on late night TV and very chic inside-the-beltway cocktail parties, there were hints of his growing strength in the presidential sweepstakes.

This is out of a column that ran on February 19, 2016, recounting an early Trump rally held in Clemson, South Carolina, which I attended:

“This guy is good on the stump. Very good. There was nothing new in what the crowd heard. There were the familiar well-received applause lines, but it was not so much what he said as how he said it. He did not talk to the crowd, he wooed it. ‘This crowd is amazing. … The people of America are so smart. … (When I am in office) you will be so proud of your country, so proud of your president. … I’m greedy. I want to be greedy for America. If we win here, we are going to run the table and make America great again. Get out and vote. I love you. I love you.’

“For 50 minutes, he held that crowd in the palm of his hand. …

“All in all, an interesting evening with a man whose draw with the Republican faithful – and even further afield – should not be underestimated.”

These two early efforts set the tone for a more-than-four-year journey following the ups and downs of probably the most tumultuous administration in America’s tumultuous history, apart from Lincoln’s struggle to hold the country together – a struggle undermined by President Trump’s predilection for driving wedges to divide it all over again. Respect for the office, not much respect for the man, but a healthy respect for his skills as a demagogue. 

Finally, in November of 2020, President Trump lost his re-election bid in the popular vote by seven million. Ironically, in the Electoral College vote, he lost by the same margin as he had won it in 2016 – an edge he declared to be a “landslide” when it favored him and a “stolen election” when it did not.

Of course, President Trump claims he really won the election and has sought to overturn the result. Were he successful, the tactics necessary to reach such a result would probably mean the end of our republic, and its transition to – what?

You would think that President Trump’s demise would make happy an old critic like me. It does not, because I see dark times ahead.

Seventy-two million of my fellow citizens voted for the soon-to-be former president and most of those folks are as enraptured today as were the folks in South Carolina four years ago. This base will be used to dictate policy to Republican members of the House and Senate who are no more likely to oppose former President Trump than they were to oppose him while he was in the White House.

This spells trouble for the incoming administration – and our fragile republic. The last thing the country needs is four more years of stalemate, yet that is the most likely thing they will see from a former president unable to come to terms with his defeat, and House and Senate Republican caucuses looking forward to mid-term elections in 2022, when history would favor congressional increases for the party out of power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

This election is over. Donald Trump’s grip on his followers is not. House and Senate Republicans are still more afraid of losing power than they are of losing our republic.

As the curse goes, wrongfully attributed to the Chinese, “May you live in interesting times.”

Not that we have much choice in the matter.