WHO'S LAUGHING AT DONALD TRUMP NOW?

He was treated like a cartoonish interloper in his first term. This time, he enters office with a shield of legitimacy that even the Democrats can't deny.

- CHARLES P. PIERCE

IN 2017, I SAT WITH A FEW journo pals below the podium on the west front of the Capitol and watched Donald Trump be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. After taking the oath of office, which he took approximately as seriously as he did contracts he'd signed with workmen in Atlantic City, he delivered what is unquestionably the weirdest inaugural address in American history-the now infamous "American Carnage" speech. Former President George W. Bush, seated nearby, reputedly called Trump's remarks "some weird shit," which I believe he actually did say because that's what all of us in my little slice of the audience said, too.

In retrospect, I have come to believe that this bit of comic-opera boogedy-boogedy gave a lot of people permission to treat the first Trump administration as a kind of burlesque of government, which is what it was, but the speech allowed us to dispense with the Respect the Office nonsense that attends the presidency. In 1970, my friend the late George Reedy wrote an indispensable book called The Twilight of the Presidency, in which he described the office as the center of a kind of cult, what he called "the American monarchy," an appellation that many of the Founders feared would apply when the Constitution was first established. As Reedy wrote:

...the most important, and least examined, problem of the presidency is that of maintaining contact with reality. Unless a president starts giving thought to this question-and on the available evidence, very few do-immediately following the fine flush of his election victory celebration, he is headed inevitably for trouble.