Donald Trump is the president America needs for its 250th birthday | Opinion
Donald Trump is exactly the president America needed for its 250th birthday.
Few presidents have reshaped American politics more profoundly. He has inspired extraordinary loyalty and extraordinary opposition. He has changed the presidency, our political vocabulary, and even the way Americans view one another. History will ultimately judge those changes as triumphs or tragedies, but there is little doubt Trump will occupy one of the largest chapters in the American story.
Read more Donald Trump is the president America needs for its 250th birthday | Opinion
And that is precisely why Trump is perfect for this moment in history. He forces us to ask whether we still are fulfilling the promise of America.
Look, anniversaries invite reflection. But this Independence Day should be more than fireworks, parades, and nostalgic speeches about the Founding Fathers. It should be a national report card.
In less than two years, Trump has challenged more long-held assumptions about the presidency than most presidents do in a lifetime.
Trump forces us to think about who we are as a nation. What does it mean to be a citizen? He forces us to think about how we vote, what is the purpose of Congress, and how much power the executive should have.
Even the landscape of Washington, DC, has become part of the debate. Trump forces to ask do we want a president with the power to bulldoze historic buildings and remake our nation’s capital in his own image?
And Trump forces us to decide how much liberty we are willing to sacrifice in the name of security – and whether we are comfortable with the military patrolling the streets of our America’s cities. This question carries particular weight because the Founding Fathers confronted it before.
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One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence accused King George III of “keeping among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.”
That was not a passing complaint. It was one of the abuses that gave birth to the American Revolution. Perhaps that’s why, as America celebrates its 250th birthday, we find ourselves arguing not about policies, but about power and whether one man should wield it like a king.
There is a line in Hamilton that may be the most consequential – and most overlooked – in the entire musical.
It comes as Alexander Hamilton stands on the dueling grounds, staring down his own mortality. In that instant, his mind races from ambition to legacy, from the mistakes he made to the nation he helped build. He calls America a “great unfinished symphony.”
Matt Wylie is a South Carolina-based Republican political strategist and analyst with more than 25 years of experience working on federal, state and local campaigns.
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