07-20-2020, 05:04 PM
(07-19-2020, 09:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I also found Skowronek's book and reviews and analysis of it in academic areas. I have added a post to the Generations thread, as that thread had stopped just before COVID-19 struck, If Trump didn't clearly fit the word "disjunctive" -- perhaps because he had just gotten away with being impeached but not convicted -- he does now. This isn't partisan bickering. I can't imagine any prominent Republican politician (OK, Ted Cruz would be at least as abrasive as Trump on something else, but I can't imagine him so botching COVID-19 as Trump; he might be disjunctive, if for other reasons) botching COVID-19 as badly as Trump did. Democratic pols of all kinds seem to have done their appointed tasks well, as have some Republican leaders.
The strongest evidence that Trump is a disjunctive leader is that things get done despite him and contrary to his desires. If that isn't failure, then what is? Dubya may have had culpability in the crooked real-estate bubble, but once the experts told him what had to be done to keep the economy from going full-blown 1930's, he went along. If one can;t be an excellent leader,then at least one can be a pliant and effective follower... not great, but Trump shows us what can be worse.
Yes, Trump sure looks like a disjunctive president. So did Bush. And 2008 sure looked like a critical election and I imagine 2020 will also look like one. But what makes a critical election critical, or a bad president disjunctive is he ends the period when his party sets the agenda. This happens when a new agenda is established by the other party under a Reconstructive president.
Hoover was disjunctive because the Republican "dispensation" established by Lincoln ended, and was replaced by a new Democratic dispensation established by FDR. That dispensation ended with Carter, making him disjunctive. It ended because Reagan was a Reconstructive president, who created a new Republican dispensation known as the Reagan revolution.
Bush certainly did his part to be disjunctive, but Democrats did not use the victories Bush's failure gave them to create a dispensation that would withstand the very next election. Now Trump is doing his damnest to be a good disjunctive president and hand the Democrats the tools they need to try again. Will they succeed--by managing to hang on to Congress in 2022, or fail like they did in 2010?
But even then, its not definitive. Bush won in 2000 AND in 2002 and 2004--just like FDR. It looked like he was well on his way to being like T Roosevelt, making 2000 a critical election, and setting his party up to continue the Reagan dispensation for another cycle. This is what Karl Rove thought. Then came 2006 and 2008 and clearly that did not happen. So this year is our third try at producing some sort of critical election/political shift (i.e. what is supposed to happen politically in a 4T but hasn't so far).