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.

Let’s dust off the good old idea of immigration reform that gives legal status to many undocumented migrants who have set down deep roots in this country — but stops illegal immigration in the future. Such legislation had gone far with bipartisan support but was killed by right-wingers opposed to anything resembling amnesty for lawbreakers.