It is one of the benefits of American democracy that the public has the power to pull the country back when they perceive it has gone too far in one direction or another.
I created this graphic at the beginning of Donald Trump's term to show that over multiple presidential administrations, our course first tacks one direction and then another, but generally speaking, the long-term course remains in the middle, toward the better.
History is likely to conclude that the last four years pulled us toward white supremacy, isolationism, limiting rights, and general divisiveness. The next four years will likely lead us in different directions. It may well be that historians 50-100 years from now will see the Trump Administration as revealing a deep darkness in American society that had mostly been hidden. Maybe we needed Trump's authoritarian tendencies, chaos, and bluster in order to learn important lessons and "reimagine" who we are as a society, what kind of country we were meant to be.
For example, the Obama Administration was pretty dramatic in terms of the liberal/progressive agenda. The electorate decided it was time to take a break (not counting questions of election meddling).
Now that we have experienced the opposite direction for a while, the electorate has decided it's time to take the next steps in addressing importing things like climate change, health care, the tax code, and meaningful immigration reform.
American democracy often doesn't "get it right." Bad decisions get made and sometimes it takes a long time to correct them. But elections allow the electorate to correct the heading and preserve the long-term course.
