The Other Side

Perhaps the Largest Protest in U.S. History Was Brought to You by President Donald Trump 
 

- Karl Vick

WE COULD TALK ALL DAY ABOUT NUMBERS. Were 250,000 people on hand to see Donald Trump take the oath, or more like the 1.5 million he says he saw? The women, men and children (but mostly women) who a day later filled the streets of cities across the nation—did they total a million? Two million? More than three? Does it matter? The numbers that count were tallied on Nov. 8, the votes that lifted Trump onto that majestic semicircle on the Capitol’s west terrace and into the rarified air sniffed by fewer than four dozen men since the dawn of the Republic. But the job of President of the United States arrives with aching expectations, a collective yearning for wise leadership that, fortunately for the novice, can be managed only through the rituals that have governed the postelection behavior of every winning candidate in living memory. The protocol is not written down. It exists in behaviors—humility, respect, a high-minded posture of restraint that reminds us that civic life is service in pursuit not just of office but of something larger than ourselves. The 10 weeks that run through November, across the Christmas holidays and into the new year is literally a grace period, designed to reliably deliver on Jan. 20 a sense of equilibrium. Instead of where we find ourselves now.

There is no precedent in U.S. history for the show of collective outrage that answered Trump’s Inauguration. But then, there is no precedent for Trump, either: impetuous, thin-skinned and, for his trouble, entering office facing a grassroots opposition that heated up faster than a cup of ramen.