Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Here’s a look at perspectives on Donald Trump’s return to the White House and some thoughts about how to deal with that.

For example, despite the political polarization in Iowa and across the nation, one might argue there can be some contrived agreement with this wording: “Donald Trump’s return to the White House will not be as bad as millions of citizens fear.”

MAGA WELCOMES TRUMP’S RETURN

On the one side we have some two thirds of Republican voters who cheer the return because they believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats.

Many Republicans reject criticism of Trump’s first term in office, from 2017 through 2020, because they were said to be based on fake news or disproved by “alternative facts.”

So the Make America Great Again crowd is celebrating their return to lots of unfinished business.

At the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, Trump had encouraged supporters who went on to riot at the nation’s capitol. Last October, three weeks before the 2024 election, he called that riot a “day of love.”

Several deaths have been attributed to the riot, including four suicides by Capitol Police officers and other deaths by gunfire or heart attacks.

But Trump supporters remain adamant and jovial about Trump’s return.

As Trump prophesied nine years ago, during a rally at Dordt College in Sioux Center, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Small wonder then that those loyal to Trump, including Iowa’s Republican members of Congress, governor, and attorney general welcome his return to office.

Senator Chuck Grassley speaks highly of Kash Patel, Trump’s quite controversial nominee to head the FBI. Senator Joni Ernst’s questions about Pete Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense were tempered under MAGA pressure.

ON THE OTHER SIDE

However, those terrified by what a second Trump presidency will bring might woefully agree that Trump’s return to the White House “will not be as bad as millions of citizens fear.”

They would add a twist: “No, it will not be as bad. It will be much worse!”

Many signs point in that “much worse” direction.

• His nominees for cabinet positions and other seats of influence and power, including Patel and Hegseth, may collectively be considered the worst ever named by an incoming or sitting president.

• His ravings on Panama, Greenland, and Canada are widely seen as silly and absurd.

• His vows of revenge and retribution against those who have opposed him make President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” look like playground folly.

• White Christian nationalists will become even more ascendant in threatening the separation of church and state.

The outlook is even gloomier if one expects some system of checks and balances to challenge Trump.

Iowa state government certainly will do nothing to resist the Trump agenda.

To counter fears, let’s look to people who “had it right” and hope we see more profiles in courage than profiles in cowardice from officials and those active in civic affairs in the coming months and years.

HARRY TRUMAN HAD IT RIGHT

Trump supporters will say he must be respected—not denigrated nor despised—because after all he was elected president and holds the world’s most important political office.

Harry Truman saw it differently. He distinguished between the office of the president and the person holding the office. The constitutional office of president has to be respected. The person in that office is fair game for criticism.

I’ve spent many days at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and have read hundreds of letters to President Truman from citizens about one presidential action or another. The most moving was a letter from grieving parents whose Marine Corps son was killed in Korea about the time that President Truman, once an Army artillery officer in WW I, disparaged the Marines as just the police force for the Navy.

I remember letters saying that, fortunately, Truman could not damage the Office of the President.

Letter writers and Truman distinguished between the office and the man in ways that I’ve seldom seen in news coverage and commentary.

Truman needed income when he left the presidency in January 1953.

As I noted in a previous Bleeding Heartland post: “Truman rejected invitations to serve on various corporate boards at salaries in the range of $50,000 or more a year (almost $600,000 today). In effect, he told those making such offers: “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”

Contrast that with Trump, who has put his presidential stamp of approval on the sale of expensive shoes, Bibles, watches, guitars, and now cryptocurrency, which he peddles for personal gain.

Respect for the Office of President of the United States?

Few, if any, have shown less respect than Trump.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER HAD IT RIGHT

Dietrich Bonhoffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran Pastor and theologian who opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazification of the church. The Nazis executed him as U.S. forces advanced upon concentration camps in the closing days of World War II. Bonhoeffer had been critical of those who stayed within organizations they knew to be corrupt—stayed because they thought they could change the organization from within.

Here’s how he had characterized their futile efforts: “If you are on the wrong train headed in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you run up the train aisle in the right direction.”

On October 30, the New York Times carried a lengthy article related to Bonhoeffer’s point with the headline “Once Top Advisers to Trump, They Now Call Him ‘Liar,’ ‘Fascist’ and ‘Unfit.’” The advisers, numbering about 90, signed on to the first Trump administration perhaps for the opportunity of public service and maybe to bring some sense to their agencies’ missions. They left or were booted out because they placed public service above Trump fealty. Given that, and the Trump roster of cabinet nominees, you can see why “it will be worse” may mark the course for the next few years.

BEN FRANKLIN HAD IT RIGHT

Now we’re back to the close of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787. That’s when Elizabeth Willing Powel is remembered as having asked founding father Benjamin Franklin, a convention delegate: “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin’s answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Given the Trump/MAGA threats, Franklin’s answer seems even more relevant to the grand experiment in self-government envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Franklin’s challenge: “If you can keep it.”

(By the way, Mrs. Powel (1742-1830) surfaces again at a crucial time in U.S. history as being influential in urging President George Washington to seek a second term in 1792 and not retire to Mount Vernon as he intended.)

TOM PAINE HAD IT RIGHT

On December 23, 1776, Thomas Paine wrote his Crisis letter, containing words that serve as encouragement and duty to those who oppose the incoming Trump regime:

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Perhaps Iowa can still get it right in the 2026 election.

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Top image: On left, then President Donald Trump embraces the American flag on March 2, 2019, at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour available via Wikimedia Commons. On right: Trump supporters riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo by Sebastian Portillo, available via Shutterstock.