Swearing in a new era of Trump

As Donald Trump prepares for his inauguration on Tuesday AEDT, there is a sense of confidence and momentum about him that he lacked in 2017, and he must use it wisely to ensure there is no return to the chaos that was the hallmark of his previous White House term. The circumstances surrounding his swearing-in are far more propitious than eight years ago. Mr Trump will arrive back in the Oval Office after a clear electoral victory that was largely his own doing. The Republican majority in congress is overwhelmingly loyal to him and the Democrats are in disarray after four years of Joe Biden. There are no calls to impeach him, as there were even before he had set foot in the White House; no claims of Russian collusion in his election victory; no overhyped narratives from a media that went all-in against him last time but now is suffering the consequences of overreach and distortion.

Mr Trump has a personal favourable rating of 50 per cent and new political capital, and his new chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has imposed order on incoming White House staff that contrasts with the daily chaos of the transition eight years ago. Whether this lasts remains to be seen. Mr Trump is nothing if not unpredictable.

But if, at 78, he has learned to be a little less outrageously disruptive, then it will be a positive. As a new Wall Street Journal poll on the weekend showed, while voters gave him the victory they did and continue to support many of the goals Mr Trump set for his second term, they are “not on board” with the way he wants to accomplish them.

The central message of the poll, as The Wall Street Journal put it, is that they want “MAGA lite – a tempered, less assertive set of policies than Trump promised in the most unbridled moments of his campaign … the appetite is for MAGA lite rather than extra-strength MAGA” on issues such as the sweeping deportation of undocumented immigrants.

For the sake of the longer-term interests of his administration, Mr Trump should not ignore such polling. Going to China for an early summit with Xi Jinping, as Mr Trump reportedly wants to do early in his new term, is no bad thing. What is needed in the White House post-Biden is strong, sensible and resolute leadership, not just of the US but of the free world. Mr Trump’s second term will stand or fall on his ability to deliver that.

Mr Trump 2.0 has got off to a good start. If he maintains the tempo, even as a convicted felon he could end up being the great president that seemed so unlikely when he left the White House in disgrace in 2021.