Writing About a Presidency That Isn’t Over Yet

Why try to write a book that revolves largely around the current administration while it’s still in power—especially given the chaos around it? I won’t lie: it was a challenge. But I felt a sense of urgency, and a fear that waiting might sell our chance to take back American democracy short.

You may be thinking the current president is now in his 80s, so we just need to wait it out and this will all be over. I fear it’s not that simple. The party that brought him to power and turned a blind eye to his excesses, vulgarities, shortcomings, and corruption (yes, I’ll use that word) will still be here. Its leaders will still want to hang on to the gains they’ve achieved. I believe those gains were made at the expense of the many for the benefit of the few—but they are a powerful, motivated few.

I’ve read a number of compelling books written after the first Trump administration. Many were clearly written with an eye toward cashing in on great material—and I’ll admit, a few were absolute page‑turners that read like Beltway thrillers. But they were also postmortems, morality tales meant to warn us not to let such a candidate rise again.

Yet here we are.

Those books came out in the tidal wave of the pandemic, when the Trump presidency was behind us and we had other things to worry about. We ignored the warnings. Those of us who were not supporters thought we had survived it, and the task now was simply to get through the next crisis. Unfortunately, the president’s anger at being rejected for re‑election has fueled the destructive nature of this second term. I don’t believe we have the luxury of waiting for another postmortem period. American democracy is teetering on the brink.

What can we do as ordinary citizens? First, remember that democracy is here to serve us—not the other way around. But we also have to work to preserve it. Think of it like an aging house: you can live in it, but if you don’t care for it, eventually it will fall down around you. In this case, we have an administration hastening that decay, taking a wrecking ball to the structure. If you want a house to live in when Donald Trump moves out, acting now is the only option.

If this resonates with you and you want to follow along as I keep writing about American democracy, you can join the email list and be the first to know when new commentary and updates on Becoming the Blizzard are published.

Hero

Eye-level view of a historic building representing democracy