As president, will Trump be the good twin or the evil twin?

By Tom Gallagher, Special to the Sun

Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Dear President-elect Trump,

You and I have known each other since we went head to head in 1988 in the battle for control of Resorts International when I served as Merv Griffin’s lawyer. Merv used to tell me you were twins — a good twin and a bad twin. Ironically we both went on to business success, you as the creator of a major real estate company, and I as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Later we both went into politics. You have had remarkable success in that endeavor. Myself not so much, having lost a race for Congress 12 years ago.

I am writing because I believe that you have an extraordinary opportunity that few people ever have. Not the fact that, much to my surprise, you have won the presidency. Rather the opportunity you have for a do-over that few ever have.

You have a chance to remake yourself as a person who leaves all your troubled baggage behind and takes on the role of a true uniter of our fractured society. It is an enormous challenge. A majority of the voters in our country did not vote for you. Many of them are genuinely afraid of what you said in your campaign. They are frustrated and angry and are having a hard time wishing for your success.

I need not catalog those things you said. You know them better than anyone else. But the question is: Can you now put them aside and look with clear eyes at the needs of all the people you now represent? We are watching closely, not with ill will but with genuine concern about the signals you will send us in the next few weeks.

Your appointments to your Cabinet will be scrutinized with both hope and suspicion. If you choose only those among your loyalists who have been your surrogates in the divisive rhetoric of the campaign, you will send an unmistakable signal that you have not taken seriously the lessons of this election.

By the same token, if your congressional leaders continue their pursuit of partisan investigations rather than a bipartisan effort on the enormous unmet needs of our country, they will simply reinforce the idea that Washington is even more broken than anyone ever imagined.

Your opponent asked us to offer you an open mind and a chance to lead. Given the history of this campaign, that is an enormously difficult request for many of us to honor. I remember my own campaign and the incredibly nasty and false ads that were run against me. It took me awhile to put them behind me and focus on how I could best contribute to society in the future.

Put bluntly, you are now riding the back of an enormous tiger. There are many people in our country who are waiting, indeed perhaps hoping, that the tiger will eat you. You have raised enormous expectations, ones that as a former candidate myself, I know will be impossible to fulfill.

I do not yet hope the tiger turns on you, but there are almost 60 million of our citizens who are now waiting anxiously to see if you will rise to the occasion and reach out to all of us. The next few weeks are critical. You and I know that humility was never your strong suit. The question is: Will your victory play to your best or worst instincts? Which twin is going to be our president?

Tom Gallagher is a retired gaming executive who lives in Las Vegas and serves on the boards of a number of community organizations.