The Promise of Political Rebirth for Donald Trump

It seems ages ago, but before the attempt on his life and the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, Donald Trump was set to go from his sentencing hearing in a Manhattan courtroom to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in the course of a few days. He was going to accept his party’s presidential nomination with an emphasis on his being a convicted felon, as the Democrats like to say — or as he would have put it, as a victim of political persecution by the deep state and Democratic prosecutors.

Now his situation has altered dramatically. The legal proceedings are themselves on trial, on hold or in the process of being dismissed. Politically and legally, the cases against him, at least for the time being, have stalled, or for the documents case in Florida, collapsed, though an appeal is planned.

More strikingly, the case Mr. Trump would have made for himself in his acceptance speech as a witness, a martyr to serial partisan persecution, has suddenly been transcended. It was shoved aside by the would-be assassin’s bullet, which came within an inch of its target, drawing blood but not brain. Instead of another awful Zapruder film, Americans saw Mr. Trump rise again, shake his fist defiantly and exit on his own two feet, shouting, “Fight!”

At that moment the candidate became a civic symbol, as opposed to merely a partisan or political one. The scene instantly recalled worse American tragedies — the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, among others — and voters cannot forget those associations. Never Trumpers have frequently accused Mr. Trump of lacking courage — sometimes because he has never faced death on the battlefield. That criticism now seems dated.

At the convention Mr. Trump faces a new, more promising rhetorical and political situation. His acceptance speech on Thursday night presents a dramatic opportunity for political rebirth. Magnanimity may not come naturally to Mr. Trump, but a close call with mortality can change one’s perspective, as Ronald Reagan admitted after his own close call in 1981.

It will be hard for Mr. Trump’s opponents to run against a near-martyr for democracy on the ground that he is a danger to democracy. Nonetheless, they will try.