An open letter to President Trump:imagining the U-turn that could shock the world

Constitutional limits would remain; so would your responsibility for your future conduct.

Two productive years would not erase the damage that preceded them because repair is not erasure and accomplishment is not virtue. The country would owe you an honest assessment of a change - not forgiveness.

The surprise would be sustaining it

Must all this begin with a moral awakening? No, we need not stake the proposition on something definitely uncertain. Start with what you want most: what serves my interest now?

Two more years of retaliation might satisfy your anger. They would also strengthen the judgment that you cannot distinguish the presidency from personal vindictiveness and vendettas.

Changing course would bring a different frustration. Your opponents would question your motives. Some would give you less credit than you believed you deserved.

Do you want to preserve an accomplished achievement rather than destroy it to punish the insufficiently grateful? That would be the real test.

Your disregard for consistency could, for once, serve a constructive purpose. Announce that circumstances have changed because of the mid - term elections, that another approach is necessary, and - naturally - that only you can deliver it, as you customarily claim.

Mr. President, political imagination is not political amnesia. Nothing proposed here would wipe away your horrific record at home or abroad. Those actions, their victims, and their consequences would remain part of history.

But a sustained, consequential U-turn could become the most astonishing feature of your presidency. Perhaps your legacy would be more for that reversal than for the damage that made it necessary - not because the damage vanished, but because the departure was so unexpected and its benefits so substantial.

That is the possibility this letter imagines, however improbable.

You have spent years insisting that you alone can do what others cannot.