Not a month old, the second Trump presidency is barreling toward the decline that big-mouth leaders have been sending their countries for centuries.

Those of us who live in the mainstream need to be extra vigilant about extreme voices that are eager to exploit our legitimate grievances and frustrations for their own power grabs.

It’s still up to the rest of us to try to turn his dream into a new reality. It’s worth the effort.

If health insurance companies are to remain the intermediary between our healthcare delivery system and the patients they serve, they should be tightly regulated entities that facilitate, not complicate, the process of delivering the care patients pay for and deserve. We need to develop a system that rewards the provision of quality care, not the withholding of it.

This is not to say that Trump is an anodyne centrist. His zeal for tariffs and apparent determination to retake the Panama Canal are hardly consensus positions, and he didn’t mention his imminent Jan. 6 pardons in his address. No matter how much momentum Trump has now, controversies will pile up and events will take a hand. The current goodwill could prove quite transitory.