Commentary: Can Trump make nation believe in him?

By Luke Zubrod

The American ideal is not only about economic opportunity. We are the "shining city on a hill" because of our remarkable history of protecting the oppressed. Such moments have been America's finest hours - those that made us truly great.

The Republican Party - Abraham Lincoln's party - has long been a worthy steward of this heritage. In his presidential nominating speech in 1880, with memories of the Civil War still fresh, James Garfield articulated the party's most storied contribution to this cause. Speaking to a raucous Chicago convention, he observed that the party "drew its first breath from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every human heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish." He continued, "The Republican Party came to deliver and to save. It entered the arena where the beleaguered and assailed territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross."

Ronald Reagan was continuing this legacy when he stood in Berlin more than a century later and boldly challenged, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan's vision for America was the shining city - an image he invoked on the eve of his 1980 election and again in his 1989 farewell address. For him, this city was "a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home."

These men understood liberty and recognized the importance of language to draw out, in Lincoln's words, "the better angels of our nature."

It would thus far be difficult to characterize Donald Trump's campaign as calling out our better angels. He has used demeaning language toward women and ethnic minorities, been slow to distance himself from racist supporters, and praised leaders, like Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein, who have shown little regard for human rights. As a result, Trump is losing people who are looking for a leader with wisdom and empathy in addition to vision. Indeed, many Republicans regard his rhetoric as incongruous with the party's rich heritage of fighting on behalf of oppressed people.

But the campaign isn't over, and Trump's words may one day be backed by the power of the presidency. Thus, elevating his language now could set the stage for a presidency that outshines his candidacy and confounds his critics.

A model of such transformation can be found in the presidency of Chester Arthur. As the top official at the New York Customs House, Arthur was a symbol of a system widely regarded as corrupt. He was tapped for the vice presidency only as a political compromise to bring warring party factions together under Garfield.

When Garfield was wounded by an assassin's bullet early in his presidency, many Americans imagined with horror the possibility that Arthur would become their president. It is in this context that Arthur began receiving letters from Julia Sands, a reclusive woman from New York City. That the letters were among a small collection of personal papers Arthur did not eventually destroy, and that he once visited Sands, tell us that her words struck a chord. Her letters paired an honest reckoning of how America perceived him with a call for Arthur to become his best self.

In the conclusion to her opening letter, she wrote, "Disappoint our fears. Force the nation to have faith in you. Show from the first that you have none but the purest of aims. You cannot slink back into obscurity, if you would. A hundred years hence, school boys will recite your name in the list of presidents and tell of your administration. And what shall posterity say? It is for you to choose."

Arthur would take Sands' advice by embracing the cause of civil-service reform. By the end of his presidency, the journalist Alexander McClure wrote that "no man ever entered the presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired . . . more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe." Mark Twain declared, "It would be hard to better President Arthur's administration."

What might posterity say about a President Trump? Even if his policies succeed in restoring America's economic dynamism, I believe he will only "Make America Great Again" if he conceives of that mission in broader terms. Not least, he must embrace within that slogan's meaning a call to protect oppressed people, and he must do so first by elevating his rhetoric.

It is the words of Donald Trump, much more than his buildings, that will outlast him.

Luke Zubrod is a former Republican committeeman in Kennett Square. lukezubrod@yahoo.com