Misty, Water Colored Memories of the Way We Were
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-voters.html
(“Do Americans Have a ‘Collective Amnesia’ About Donald Trump?”)
It is a tug of war between immediacy and recollection.
As much as Donald Trump is in our face and on the front page, the feel and touch of his policies are not. The presidency of Mr. Biden and its ups and downs stands as buffer between what Mr. Trump did horrendously wrong and our assessments of him. And distance can well make the heart grow fonder and the night sweats fade.
The challenge of George W. Bush peter principling his way to the presidency and the miscues of his two terms have now receded and been replaced in the minds of many with an image of a fellow armed with a small smile, an avuncular charm, a harmless mien. An horrific war based on manufactured intel notwithstanding.
So too the enormity of the disaster that was the four years of Mr. Trump's reign has been largely lost in the fog. His love affair with bad men, his disdain for the truth, for the rule of law, for the Constitution, for the other branches of government, his fumbling, bumbling, stumbling response to the only matter of consequence that fell onto his plate, the Covid onslaught, all now melding and melting in the minds of far too many into one mostly harmless act of eccentricity causing little lasting damage, a one shot foul. His mendacity, his prejudices. The smallest of peccadilloes.
Disregard all these trials, these findings of wrongdoing. Just remember him as a small illness that we survived and can withstand easily again.
But, as for Mr. Biden, every sneeze turns into a code red. Gas going up a nickel today. Biden's to blame. My grocery bill is higher, my boss is meaner, my wife's unhappy with me. Biden, Biden, Biden.
There is good reason one party has retained the presidency for three consecutive terms exactly once in over 70 years. The moment one party sits in the Oval Office their sins are multiplied, examined under the microscope and dissected like a frog in science class. And the errors committed by the "predecessor" are suddenly diminished in the rear view mirror.
It is how we survive as a species, allowing the pains of the past to dissipate and recede over time. But it also gives ample space for the possibility of fool me twice to grow from an unimaginable reality into the world according to Trump. Part two.