Things Trump Is Doing Right

[pbrower2a]

(05-10-2017, 02:12 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(05-10-2017, 01:55 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: In view of the generational cycle, I 'm beginning to think that President Trump is doing something positive, if without intention -- by showing how to do so many things wrong and to show the consequences of such, that he is setting up the next President -- someone better than any President since FDR (sorry, President Obama!) who gets away with being a great President in the time that quality matters more than partisanship and identity.  The generational cycle can work that way. Maybe it took the forgettable figures of the time of the French and Indian War to set up the principled leadership of the American colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. Maybe it took the awful Presidencies of Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan to make Lincoln look good as a prospective leader. Maybe it took the twelve-year disaster of Harding/Coolidge/Hoover to make FDR presentable. Obama, good as he was, may have simply delayed the Crisis; he certainly was not the one to set up a Lincoln or FDR and he was not that great.  Obama reminds me of the sort of leadership that a country usually gets after a Crisis is decisively over -- the mature Reactive like Truman or Eisenhower.

We have had a very good President sandwiched between two of the worst in American history (Dubya  looks good in contrast to Trump, but that isn't saying much)... but even if we end up with an Obama-like President following Trump, we are likely to give him more of a chance than we as a nation gave Obama. That will be the difference between an Obama... and a Lincoln or FDR. Of course, if the political institutions that we have are ripped asunder and must be remade we might end up with another Washington. Obama's personality with the cloak of military success?

The two term rule is now biting us. In the case of FDR, I wonder how it would have been if he'd been two terms and out. Heck, versus the crash of '29, the equivalent for FDR vs Obama would have been not even two terms and out ... it would have been 1.5 terms and out. Obama = last two years of Hoover + FDR 1st term + FDR 1st two years of 2nd term.

Nothing says that Donald Trump will get a second term. He has bungled so many things that he is practically setting up his own defeat in 2020. The opposing constituencies that he offended remain offended, and lots of people who voted for him have good cause to abandon him. Having gotten a just-slightly-higher percentage of raw vote as Dukakis in 1988 and McCain in 2008, he would not have to lose much to lose the next election. The liberals have started their own version of a Tea Party -- maybe not as acrimonious, but probably no less effective.  But could he lose one House of Congress and convince Americans that he is a counterbalance to extremism as Obama was? I doubt that. Donald Trump is not simply a mirror image of Barack Obama; he is deep into nepotism and cronyism, and he has tolerated one scandal after another.

I expect a decline in living standards for most Americans under Trump, whether through an economic meltdown or through policies that enrich elites at the expense of everyone else. Ronald Reagan did get away with cutting expectations (which put an end to Nixon-Ford-Carter inflation); he isn't as good a communicator as Reagan.

I have seen polls suggesting that President Trump has the sort of approval ratings characteristic of Jimmy Carter late in 1980.   Such is unstable. He might have some good luck and get within range of winning in 2020 if he has a solid campaign for re-election. Maybe he moderates a bit and causes people to forget how awful he was at the outset. On the other side, his policies could have catastrophic effects.