"An independently wealthy Republican president is tossed out of office after a single term amid massive economic hardship and fears of political violence. There are rumors he was under surveillance or about to be arrested. Relentless, bitter, appalled at his Democratic successor, he stews in his elegant midtown Manhattan suite, plotting his next move. Except it was not Trump Tower but the Waldorf-Astoria and the ex-president was Herbert Hoover.
Most ex-presidents enter post Oval life bearing scars and regrets. Some take up painting; some lean into atonement. “We all have sorrows,” as Jimmy Carter told me. Or as the prayer of confession puts it, presidents often leave office haunted by what they have done and what they left undone. The libraries, the foundations and philanthropies, even the memoirs, serve both as explanation and expiation, as their legacies settle and harden.
The scandal of Donald Trump’s passage through public life rests both in what he has done and what he has left undone–so much power to do good, deployed instead to divide and conquer."
- Nancy Gibbs, former Editor-in-Chief, TIME Magazine
TIME
"An independently wealthy Republican president is tossed out of office after a single term amid massive economic hardship and fears of political violence. There are rumors he was under surveillance or about to be arrested. Relentless, bitter, appalled at his Democratic successor, he stews in his elegant midtown Manhattan suite, plotting his next move. Except it was not Trump Tower but the Waldorf-Astoria and the ex-president was Herbert Hoover.
Most ex-presidents enter post Oval life bearing scars and regrets. Some take up painting; some lean into atonement. “We all have sorrows,” as Jimmy Carter told me. Or as the prayer of confession puts it, presidents often leave office haunted by what they have done and what they left undone. The libraries, the foundations and philanthropies, even the memoirs, serve both as explanation and expiation, as their legacies settle and harden.
The scandal of Donald Trump’s passage through public life rests both in what he has done and what he has left undone–so much power to do good, deployed instead to divide and conquer."
- Nancy Gibbs, former Editor-in-Chief, TIME Magazine
1 year ago | [YT] | 178