The end of Donald Trump’s presidency

Four years ago, Barack Obama left office after a presidential term notable for great oratory and style, but dogged by frustrations over substance. Today, Donald Trump leaves office after four years that have contained some significant achievements but whose style has lurched from divisive to rabble-rousing. He will now be tried by the Senate as the only president ever to have been impeached twice.

The mob that invaded the Capitol surely dispelled any remaining doubts about the dangers of toxic rhetoric, especially when spread by a leader with an instinctive gift for media platforms old and new – television and Twitter.

It was Newt Gingrich, that staunch Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives between 1995 and 1999, who realised that sowing division was a fruitful political strategy. Identifying “wedge issues”, from abortion to gay marriage, was critical, as was terminology. In 1990, Gingrich wrote the introduction to a Republican leaflet called Language, a Key Mechanism of Control, which advised candidates to contrast exultant terms about themselves (such as “crusade”, “moral” and “pioneer”) with excoriating abuse for Democrats (“pathetic”, “liberal”, “radical” and “sick”). It was a strategy of polarisation that ended four decades of Democrat control of the House.

Mr Trump took that strategy and ran with it, relentlessly talking up his own abilities while disparaging his opponents. It proved hugely successful, winning him office and astonishing personal loyalty from millions of Americans. Inevitably, loyalty from the Republican Party, which realised the reach and power of Mr Trump to mobilise support for its candidates, followed. Only now is that party support beginning to crack.

It is certainly not cracking among rank-andfile voters, if polls are to be believed. Republican voters overwhelmingly still view Mr Trump favourably. Worryingly, three quarters of them think Joe Biden did not win the election legitimately. Given that Mr Trump won 74 million votes, more than any candidate ever, bar Mr Biden, there are significant obstacles to the reconciliation hoped for by the incoming president.

What drove – and drives – such loyalty to Mr Trump, despite his flaws? It is easy to suggest that it was and is a culture war infused by demographic fear. But to do so is to forget where Trumpism started – in legitimate questions about the fate of blue-collar workers disfranchised by globalisation, patronised by political and technological elites, and hit by financial deprivation and opioid addiction that actually saw life expectancy decline.

And the truth is that on many issues, despite his questionable style, Mr Trump had substance, scoring policy victories. He ripped up regulation, as promised. He ended military adventures abroad, as promised. He lowered taxes, as promised. He appointed conservative judges, including three to the Supreme Court, as promised.

So when trying to identify the fount of Trump supporters’ loyalty to him, it is worth listening when time and again, they say: “He does what he says he’ll do.”

The tragedy of Trump’s term is that, instead of focusing on such supporters and their continuing concerns, he sought out fresh enemies. Rather than building a policy agenda to address the causes of anger, he mistook anger for an agenda of its own. So the term that began with concern for forgotten steel workers ended with the peddling of a fatuous conspiracy that a paedophile network had infiltrated Washington.

But it leaves the question: where do Republicans go now? Do they heal around a much more traditional conservatism or is the schism between rural and urban, protectionist and Wall Street, authoritarian and consensual (among many others) now too big, too bitter to overcome?

In the answer to that will lie lessons for every country, as global communications, trade, technology, disease and immigration challenge the concept and comfort of the nation state and upend billions of lives along the way.

Mr Trump is gone. But unless the issues he so skilfully played to his advantage are addressed, others will follow in his mould. They might make him look like a moderate, and today’s ceremony in Washington a harmonious transition of power.