With two New Year’s resolutions, Donald Trump could secure a more favorable legacy

Donald trumpDonald TrumpOne in three Americans say violence against government is sometimes justified: Poll Seven most vulnerable governors facing re-election in 2022 on Sunday show snapshot: Omicron surge continues; anniversary of the January 6 attack is approaching MORE is one of the most controversial figures in the United States since the Civil War. He bears considerable responsibility for the United States’ disastrous response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, legitimizing white supremacy and lying about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Nonetheless, with two widely publicized New Year’s resolutions, Trump could serve his country well while going a long way toward securing a more favorable legacy. Here’s how:

1) Until very recently, Trump’s vaccine approval was lukewarm. He has three times refused to be photographed as he received a jab. Vice president Mike penceMichael (Mike) Richard Pence This Year Mike Pence Should Resolve To Be Our Next President What My 2021 Inbox Reveals About The 2024 GOP Race The 10 Republicans Most Likely To Run For President MORE, on the other hand, received her first photo at a live televised event. Trump was conspicuous in his absence when former Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush, Obama and their wives participated in a public service announcement urging Americans to get vaccinated. On August 21, 2021, at a rally in Cullman, Alabama, Trump said, “Take the vaccine. I did. It’s okay. “But when the crowd booed, he pulled out,” No, it’s okay. It’s okay. You have your freedoms. But I happened to take the vaccine.

At the end of December 2021, Trump, who knows how to blow his own horn, changed his tone. Trump boasted, as he had done before, that developing vaccines in record time was a “historic” achievement of his administration and urged his supporters to “take the credit – we saved tens of millions of lives ”. But this time, he shrugged in the boos that followed his revelation that he had taken a booster shot, “Don’t, don’t, don’t, no, no.” It’s – there’s a very little group there. Trump also fended off conservative media personality Candace Owens: “Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you get it, it’s a very minor form. People don’t die when they get vaccinated. When President BidenJoe Biden Kentucky Governor declares state of emergency after powerful storm Seven most vulnerable governors to be re-elected in 2022 At least 20 states to raise minimum wage from Saturday MORE credited with “the previous administration and our scientific community” with making the United States one of the first countries to receive the vaccine, Trump expressed surprise and appreciation: “I think he did something very good. You know it’s got to be a healing process in this land, and it’ll help a lot. ”

Trump’s first New Year’s resolution is expected to be to redouble efforts – in media appearances and rallies – to reduce vaccine reluctance, which remains high among his staunch Republican supporters. He can – and certainly will continue to – claim that warrants are not the answer. But as the Omicron variant rises, Trump can look back and forward, taking credit for the speed at which safe and effective vaccines have become available, while advancing, in more ways than one, the ” healing process in this country ”.

2) For Trump, the road back to the White House is fraught with uncertainties and obstacles. The former president will be 78 in 2024, overweight and, according to Franklin Graham, “dude doesn’t eat well.” Trump will face potentially damaging revelations from a litigation blizzard: a criminal indictment of the Trump Organization for tax evasion by the Manhattan District Attorney; a related civil investigation by New York State Attorney General Letitia James into possible property value inflation to secure bank loans; a criminal investigation by the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, for violation of Georgia’s election laws; the prosecution of police officers injured in the assault on the United States Capitol; a United States Supreme Court ruling on the release of documents by the National Archives related to the assault on the United States Capitol; and, of course, the ongoing investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives select committee to determine whether it obstructed justice and instigated an attempted coup.

Support for a Trump re-election campaign has waned: 59% of Americans don’t want him running, with an additional 14% “not sure”; 23% of Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 don’t think he should be at the polls in 2024, and the vast majority of independents agree. When the former president is faced with other potential GOP presidential contenders, only 44% of Republican voters choose him (up from 58% in August), a result that could embolden one or more of his rivals to throw their hats in the door. ring.

A former casino mogul who hates to lose and lose and doesn’t care that much about governing, Trump may well decide not to roll the dice. A New Year’s resolution, conceived as a desire to put the well-being of his fellow Americans before personal and partisan interests, combined with a challenge to President Biden to help unify the country by withdrawing as well, would elevate him almost certainly in the esteem of millions of Americans, across the ideological spectrum, and – who knows – has spread the narrative, despite accusations that this is a re-branding campaign, that The Donald is an elderly statesman who helped preserve democracy.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.