NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE I n the attempt to understand Donald Trump’s rise and place in our national politics, commentators and historians have reached for a number of current and historical analogies, most of them implausible. Some of his enemies hold that he is a “Putinist” and tie him to the rise of illiberal democracy as a threat within the world. Some of his admirers think of him as an Andrew Jackson–like figure. Some of his enemies see in him a figure of American backlash against racial progress, and look at the era of Reconstruction and Redemption.

But, sitting here at National Review, it’s impossible not …