… Trump’s campaign was surreal and an intellectual embarrassment, and political experts of all stripes told us he could never become president. …
Historians, of course, are not called upon to be seers. Our professional canons warn us against presentism — we are supposed to weigh the evidence of the past on its own terms — but at the same time, the questions we ask are conditioned by the present. That is, ultimately, what we are called upon to explain. Which poses a question: If Donald Trump is the latest chapter of conservatism’s story, might historians have been telling that story wrong? CONT.
Rick Perlstein, New York Times Magazine