WASHINGTON _ In the Book of Proverbs it is written: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Our president-elect's answer to that is his promise to "make American great again." But the proverb goes on to add: "But he that accepts the law, happy is he."
Donald Trump's history of skirting the law as a master builder, now being revealed in new journalistic reports, includes using Trump Foundation money for personal purposes and stiffing manual laborers in the building of his hotel empire. His recent admissions question his reverence for the law.
His desire to involve his children in official government affairs while they run his business empire after he assumes the Oval Office already fails to pass the smell test. His continuing refusal to release his income-tax returns also keeps an ethical cloud hovering over his impending administration.
As for the vision part, it lacks any specifics other than vague assurances of restoring the former prosperity of millions of blue-collar factory workers who deserted the Democratic Party on Election Day, disappointed that their old political home had let them down.
Much of their hope that Trump's pledge would bring back the old Democratic "happy days are here again," this time delivered by a Republican president, was offered on the strength of his charismatic campaign oratory, along with his success as an outsized celebrity real-estate tycoon.
The "vision" was akin to Ronald Reagan's dream of "a shining city on a hill." The Gipper visualized and effectively sold it to American voters in 1980 in scoring a landslide election victory over the halting and uncertain President Jimmy Carter.
Reagan, peddling his version of Willy Loman's smile and a shoeshine en route to re-election in 1984, combined the whole of Proverbs 29:18 as an optimistic and happy warrior. It sustained him through the eight years of his presidency, and although he left a less-than-shining city on that hill, he retired as a much-loved Republican and national icon.
Trump, faced with a less hospitable Democratic minority than Reagan ever faced and essentially a 50-50 partisan country, as reflected in Hillary Clinton's winning of the popular vote, has his work cut out for him "making America great again" and being happy in the process.
One obvious challenge is his personal leadership style of retaining for himself not only the final but the only say in his huge capitalist empire. The previous GOP president, George W. Bush, boasted of being "The Decider," but he surrounded himself with strong and opinionated subordinates of the ilk of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, who had input.
Trump has already made clear that only he will decide. He reinforces the impression by considering some individuals for key cabinet and top administration positions he barely knows. It seems, as in the case of Mitt Romney, that he doesn't care whether they agree with him on key issues or not.
His vague commitment to make America great again does not come close the John F. Kennedy's inspiring call to send an American to the moon and return him safely, which aroused national pride and patriotism to stratospheric heights. That feat appeared to set JFK firmly on course to re-election in 1964 until that aspiration was shattered by his assassination in Texas.
Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, offered an inspirational call of "let us continue" the Kennedy era and then his own ambitious Great Society agenda, which apparently proved too ambitious, though he was easily elected in his own right in 1964.
It is, of course, much too early to argue that Trump's equally ambitious goal to make American great again is beyond his reach or ability to rally his currently worshipful believers to the task. Putting millions more blue-collar voters to work in the Rust Belt would be an impressive start.
As retiring President Obama was among the first to say, the president-elect deserves the chance and the good wishes of his countrymen of whatever party to succeed, on his own as he professes to prefer. At the Republican convention in Cleveland, he memorably said of the nation's travail: "Only I can fix it." Now he just has to prove it.
