https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-the-resurrection-of-donald-trump?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It’s tempting for me to say this isn’t a surprise.
Back in May last year, I predicted “Trump’s second act,” telling Spectator readers: “He can still win, in spite of everything.” My point was that the Democrats’ strategy of lawfare against Donald Trump was highly likely to backfire. “If Lula [da Silva] can come back from one-and-a-half-years in jail to win” the Brazilian presidency, I wrote, “Trump may have little to worry about, as there isn’t the slightest chance of his being locked up between now and Election Day next year. Indeed, the perception that Democratic operatives are using the legal system for political ends will likely help him win votes.”
“Joe Biden,” I concluded, “is in serious danger of following Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush into the bin marked ‘one-term presidents.’ ”
Last week, too, I was ready to predict that Kamala Harris was destined for the bin marked “incumbent vice presidents who lost.”
Nevertheless, I am surprised by the scale of Trump’s win.
They used to call Bill Clinton “the Comeback Kid.” He cut a forlorn figure these past few days, trying feebly to drum up enthusiasm for the Democrats’ worst candidate since George McGovern. Well, move over, Bill. There’s a new Comeback Kid in town. Except that Trump is the Comeback King.
This is a bigger comeback than Grover Cleveland’s in 1892, when he became the first—and, until last night, only—American president to win a second nonconsecutive term. This is a bigger comeback than Richard Nixon’s, when he was elected president in 1968, eight years after he lost by a dubious whisker to John F. Kennedy. It’s bigger than Winston Churchill’s multiple comebacks, the biggest of which were in 1940 and 1951. It’s bigger than Charles de Gaulle’s in 1958. It’s bigger than Napoleon’s Hundred Days in 1815. In fact, I am tempted to say that the only comeback it’s not bigger than is the Resurrection.
