The politics of enthusiasm, and how it matters in everyday life

It is, of course, impossible to see intangible things. But sometimes an intangible thing is so vibrant, so pronounced and so real that it is as though it can actually be seen. 

I had that experience. I was in Washington, D.C., for inaugural activities – and saw an intangible thing. This was enthusiasm.  

I saw the beginning of this enthusiasm the moment President Donald Trump was elected. Many people I know – and many more I don’t – reached out to the administration (directly or indirectly) with a question: How can I help? 

President-elect Donald Trump arrives to attend a rally the day before his inauguration for a second term, in Washington, D.C., Jan. 19, 2025. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The people I know (and presumably those I don’t) are extraordinarily talented – and wanted to move to D.C., immediately, to work for free in whatever capacity where their skills could be most productively deployed. The broad-based coalition that drove Trump to victory, combined with the astonishingly good early appointments, fueled an outburst of ambitious idealism.

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This ambitious idealism was essentially visible in the run-up to the inauguration. It was best captured by a visionary thinker and leader in healthcare policy I met at one of the events. He told me that he had been reading books on the New Deal – and explained that learning about the young men who flocked to Washington to work on President Franklin Roosevelt’s massively ambitious agenda was the best way for him to understand what was happening now. 

This enthusiasm was especially marked by the contrast on the Democratic side. There seems to be no enthusiasm for anything there. I cannot think of a single policy, let alone a coherent set of policies, that the Democrats are enthusiastic about now – with the possible exception of abortion, which is now a state issue.  

It is even hard to think of anything they are enthusiastically against now. On the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, half a million people came to Washington, D.C., for the “Women’s March.” I wasn’t there this year on Jan 21 – but I did not see a single protest or even protester over the weekend.

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