Benjamin Netanyahu. “Braveheart.” Ryan Tannehill and Rob Gronkowski. Grover Cleveland and Grover Cleveland Alexander.
Donald Trump?
Few dramas rival the romance of great comebacks. They require resolve, reveal rectitude, provide redemption, and promote a sense of renewal.
Comebacks are often attempted but seldom succeed. In sports, Muhammad Ali and Björn Borg fell short. The film archives are full of comebacks — consider “Rudy” and “Rocky IV” — but the comeback efforts of Sharon Stone and Eddie Murphy were flops.
The Book of Proverbs reminds us that “a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.” But Trump might heed the caveat in the next phrase, which warns, “but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”
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In mounting a probable third presidential campaign in the wake of his disastrous contribution to Republican midterm failures, Trump faces great odds and the threat he will be accused of seeking payback as much as a comeback.
Trump is attempting to follow in the cleats of football’s Andrew Luck and Alex Smith. Baseball’s Buster Posey came back, nine years apart. But Mark Spitz couldn’t pull it off. Skiing’s Lindsey Vonn did it and — there’s still time — Mikaela Shiffrin might.
Historians and commentators often reference Grover Cleveland, who won the presidency in 1884, lost it in 1888, and regained it in 1892. His wife, Frances, advised the White House staff not to make substantial decorating changes; she told them she and her husband would be moving back.
But the better example for Trump might be Winston Churchill, who achieved many comebacks — from internment in a Pretoria POW camp to celebrated chronicler of the Boer War, from the architect of military defeats in two wars (the Dardanelles in World War I, Norway in World War II) to valiant British leader (the fight against Nazi Germany), capped by his return to 10 Downing St. in 1951 following his 1945 defeat. (Like Trump, Churchill was an accomplished practitioner of the verbal comeback. Nancy Astor, the first woman elected to Parliament, once told Churchill that if she were married to him she would put poison in his coffee. “If I were married to you,” he shot back, “I’d drink it.”)
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Trump likes to teach his foes a lesson but seldom learns lessons himself, which sets him apart from Churchill, who, Andrew Roberts wrote in “Churchill: Walking with Destiny,” was successful because he “learned from his mistakes, and put the lessons to good use.”
Trump might learn from others who strode the world stage, retreated in ignominy, and returned in triumph.
Napoleon isn’t a good example; his return to the European continent after exile in Elba led to defeat at Waterloo. But Britain’s Benjamin Disraeli might work; he went from financial ruin, a breakdown, and four successive losses in parliamentary elections to finally winning a seat in Westminster, evolving into the ultimate insider, and becoming prime minister for six years.
The lesson: Once inside established institutions, respect them and become their master.
He might look to Richard Nixon, who nearly lost his spot as vice president on Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 ticket but recovered with his “Checkers” speech and lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy. He lost his first comeback effort — the 1962 California gubernatorial campaign — and seemed to exit politics, telling reporters, “you don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Six years later he was president.
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The lesson: Back the sort of respectable and plausible candidates Nixon did in the 1966 midterms. Also: Stay in the background for a while. Abandon the angry profile. Nobody likes a loser raging on the heaths.
He might look north to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who served as Canada’s prime minister for more than 11 years, was defeated, and then returned for four more years. Three decades later, his son Justin Trudeau became prime minister.
The lesson: Intellectual acuity (the father) and relentless optimism (the son) are potent political weapons. You don’t need both, though one of the great comeback artists of American politics, Bill Clinton, had them. He regained the governor’s mansion in Arkansas after mordantly joking he went from the country’s youngest governor at the time to its youngest former governor — and won the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination after losing the New Hampshire primary.
It may be too late for Trump to acquire the profile of the learned statesman. It is not too late to abandon the dark talk. Making America great again, after all, requires making America optimistic again. Most of all, the voters showed last week, prevailing in a democratic system requires believing in the pinions of democracy.
David M. Shribman, former Washington bureau chief for the Globe, is executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and scholar-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University.
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