01-23-2017, 05:53 PM
Did you read that TNR piece asking aloud if Trump will be like Carter?
I'm wondering if a better analogy may turn out to be Andrew Johnson.
I wasn't a political science major and this is the first I heard of "the Politics Presidents Make" but there would seem to be no place in Skowronek’s theory for Andrew Johnson, one of most reviled and least successful presidents, who immediately followed (rather than preceded) a (presumably) "reconstructive" presidency. I'm not going to speculate about what happens, but if Obama turns out to be a genuinely transformative president, in the manner of (but to a lesser extant than) Lincoln and FDR, and Jackson and Reagan, on the right, then Trump may be compared in a certain sense to Andrew Johnson, who gave the South wide latitude to do Reconstruction Their Way, and came to be widely opposed in the North, as well as of course impeached. And he was himself succeeded by someone who sought to extend Lincoln's achievements and legacy, rather than forestall or repeal it.
I'm wondering if a better analogy may turn out to be Andrew Johnson.
I wasn't a political science major and this is the first I heard of "the Politics Presidents Make" but there would seem to be no place in Skowronek’s theory for Andrew Johnson, one of most reviled and least successful presidents, who immediately followed (rather than preceded) a (presumably) "reconstructive" presidency. I'm not going to speculate about what happens, but if Obama turns out to be a genuinely transformative president, in the manner of (but to a lesser extant than) Lincoln and FDR, and Jackson and Reagan, on the right, then Trump may be compared in a certain sense to Andrew Johnson, who gave the South wide latitude to do Reconstruction Their Way, and came to be widely opposed in the North, as well as of course impeached. And he was himself succeeded by someone who sought to extend Lincoln's achievements and legacy, rather than forestall or repeal it.