OPINION: What really happened, and what now?

Oct. 24—Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, is about the last days of the Donald Trump presidency. It has been out for a few days now but seems, after its initial splash, to have faded into the sea of distraction and sputter that currently are the signposts of our national politics.

That's too bad. The book deserves wide and considered readership.

Among the many striking things the authors contend:

—Mr. Trump is psychologically unhealthy, and he is undisciplined. But he is not irrational. And he does understand power. He knows exactly what he is doing.

—Case in point: He began laying the groundwork for his baseless claim that the election was stolen months before the election. (This mirrored the left's four-year denial of legitimacy of Mr. Trump's presidency.) This, too, Mr. Woodward and Mr. Costa say, was not a matter of ego or erratic behavior but calculation.

—The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was what Mr. Trump wanted to happen and the result, again, of his considered speech and actions.

—The plan, though it took a while to evolve, was to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the election and hence throw the election to the House, where Mr. Trump would win because Republicans control the majority of the delegations in the majority of states. Hence: Point to a steal in order to make a steal.

—All of this reveals, the two authors say, a person unfit for high office, both psychologically and in terms of values. For, if Mr. Woodward and Mr. Costa are to be believed, Donald Trump is no champion of liberal democracy.

Indeed, the book is damning even if taken with several grains of salt — even if you cut the case it makes, at length, in half.

Hard-core Trumpists will not read Peril or be moved by it. But Americans who voted for Mr. Trump, perhaps once, or thought about it, and are not thrilled with the Biden Administration, might.

Many who thought Mr. Trump had an opportunity to do something useful with his presidency, or who perhaps thought his trade policy was right, or that his approach to the Middle East had promise, or even that Greenland might wisely be purchased, must now admit that, to paraphrase Lindsey Graham's more powerful words, Mr. Trump blew it. He exploded his own presidency.

Even the issue of immigration offered the possibility of progress after years of ignoring the problem. But with reform, not race baiting.

Now we are back to ignoring the problem. We have a porous border and no rights for the people who actually carry this country on their backs, as immigrants always have.

Mr. Trump was and is incapable of constructive leadership, on this or any other issue. Reckless sabotage, including self-sabotage, came from the heart of the man.

Conservatives, Republicans, and moderates, who are honest, must now admit that the crazies on the left were right, though maybe for the wrong or purely reflexive reasons: This man was — prima facie Jan. 6 — an existential threat to our system of government. This is not only because Mr. Trump's is a toxic, disorderly, and unstable mind. (Those are the three words that best characterize the end of his administration), but because he does not understand our system or the job of a president.

Our system is all about limits.

The presidency is about two things: overseeing the executive branch with some competence and lifting the country up — leading it in dark times and articulating a more perfect union in stable times.

If Mr. Trump was mostly incapable and uninterested in governance, he was utterly incapable of inspiration or moral leadership.

And, as he contemplates running again in 2024, there is not even the slightest pretense that he is interested in either governance or aspiration.

Finally, Mr. Woodward and Mr. Costa say that liberal democracy itself is at risk. Not only is Mr. Trump a threat, but Trumpism is a perversion of populism.

But, more than that, they suggest that the press, educators, and the attentive public (citizens) are all failing in their duties.

A Trump populist who is sane and able, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, would presumably not be an existential threat to our system. But easily duped citizens, who can be led off a cliff by reckless demagogues, are a threat.

We desperately need, say Mr. Woodward and Mr. Costa, a public that has been taught civics and a press that focuses on context and chronology — a press that digs deep and covers the system and not just the game.

And we need citizens who want a press like that.

That's the most interesting and important point in Peril.

But the left should beware and Democrats take heed: Fully half of the country is not stupid. Every person who lives in a small town or rural America is not a racist. Every man fascinated by women is not a secret misogynist. Check your arrogance if you can. Rein in the extreme left-wing stuff, your end of the culture wars, and your snobbery. Do not condescend. Remember that easy and unearned smugness leads to its own inevitable karmic undoing.

You could blow this chance, Democrats, as Mr. Trump blew his. You could lose the presidency for a long time and the working class forever. Given the current intellectual and moral impoverishment of those now dominant in the Republican Party, that would be catastrophic for our country.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (burriscolumn@gmail.com)