Less than a year into Donald Trump’s second presidential term it’s clear that it was forged not during his first one – but during the interregnum. During the four-year period between his first four years in the White House and his second. Put another way, if Donald Trump had won reelection in 2020 as opposed to 2024, he would have been much less able to upend American policies and politics both at home and abroad.
For Trump and his team, the interregnum was, then, a gift. A span during which they had time to decide what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it if Trump were reelected. This was exemplified, of course, by “Project 2025,” a document prepared during the interregnum by the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 was both aspirational and literal. It was drafted as a governing agenda for Donald Trump – and as an administrative agenda. It was a blueprint for how his administration could “go to work on Day One to deconstruct the administrative state.”
Same can be said about the Democrats. How they are now is because of how they were then – during the four years that Joe Biden was president. Had Biden lost in 2020 the Democrats would have used the period after the election to, without so much as a second thought, leapfrog the old-timer to brace themselves, prepare themselves, for the brave new world that lay ahead. But, as it was, given Covid, given Biden, and given the Democrats could not conjure Trump rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of his defeat, instead of reinventing themselves they reinvented the wheel. No surprise that since then they have struggled. For all their electoral success a week ago today – which was much more an anti-Trump vote than a pro-Dem vote – the Democrats still come across as being somewhat hapless and badly divided.
What I am arguing is of course counterfactual. I cannot know what this country would look like if Biden had lost in 2020 and Trump had won. But given that I’m a betting woman I’m betting that by the time the history of the 21st century is written it will be clear that Trump and his team were well off losing the presidency in 2020 and recapturing it only in 2024. It gave them plenty of time to do what leaders should anyway do – their homework.
Reminds me of the motto of many years of the Boy Scouts of America – “Be Prepared.” Trump must’ve been a scout.