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Is Trump Presidential?
I heard on a recent podcast Fred Barnes criticize Trump for not being presidential. Let’s examine the post-WW2 Democratic presidents:
1. Truman: Threatened to punch a critic who gave a poor review of his daughter’s singing.
2. JFK: Many affairs including one with Judith Exner who was also associated with Sam Giancana. Became president by stealing Texas and Illinois.
3. LBJ: Financial corruption on a massive scale and many affairs.
4. Carter: Terrible economic policies.
5. Clinton: Many affairs.
6. Obama: Lied about ObamaCare. Spied on enemies. Called Tea Partiers an obscenity.
Perhaps Fred could inform us how Trump is not being presidential.
Published in Politics
He literally whored his aides out in the WH.
Yeah, compared to them, I think he’s doing a fine job.
Based on the evidence of all but Carter and Obama, I think you have to have a lot of affairs to be presidential.
Only Carter and Obama? Reagan and the Bushes were known to have had extra-marital affairs?
There were certainly rumors about Bush 41. But they were speaking of Democrats.
Thank you, @arahant.
Barnes appears to me to be talking about speeches/utterances/tweets. I’m not on board with calling people, among other things, “human scum,” and I’m not on board with badmouthing those who’ve left the White House, such as Jim Mattis. Still, as the O/P indicates, that doesn’t mean Trump has a monopoly on being inappropriate.
Truman didn’t just threaten to punch that reporter who criticized his daughter in print; he said that he would require “a supporter below.” In a letter. I don’t think another President has threatened to kick someone in the balls on White House stationery.
Richard,
First, you create a fantasy Presidency, really a cult of personality. Read Carl Sanburg’s Lincoln. Written in the 1930s as the ultimate cult of personality super puff piece. Now imagine how the real “rail-splitter” must have appeared to Boston Brahmins and New York Grandees. This was a huge ugly man with hands so calloused that it must have been like shaking hands with a large piece of leather. He had little or no formal education, certainly not Harvard or Yale. No matter what he said nor what he did, he never would have been one of them. They could have easily abandoned him for Little Mac in the election of 1864. However, Uncle Billy marched through Georgia and made the defeat of the South inevitable just in the nick of time.
What the idiots imagine to be “Presidential” is always just a fantasy. The real man doing the real job well is always more important. Nice post Richard.
Regards,
Jim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SupNaQeJrq0
Reagan was the President from Central Casting. The Bushes oozed patrician noblesse oblige. W’s awkwardness was forgiven because of his upbringing, his Ivy League credentials and because, like his father, he was more than willing to ditch the more “uncomfortable” aspects of the SoCons.
I can not for the life of me imagine either of the Bushes sticking with Brett Kavanaugh. Their idea of being “presidential” is to lose and withdraw with “grace.”
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing it up for me.
He is not the president we want, but he is the one we need. Nobody else could take on the bureaucratic state and media and survive. I imagine Jeb! Bush would be curled up fetal position after a few weeks.
The trick would be getting the guy to stand on the stationary long enough for you to kick him.
At risk of tautology, whatever a president does is by definition ‘presidential’.
People who traffic in the ‘not presidential’ phrase are really just saying that they don’t like the way the guy behaves.
I’m sick of people who can’t recognize that the political landscape has changed, and that the definition of “presidential” has changed as well. At this moment, Trump is what is needed.
Well, George Bush did stick with Clarence Thomas. I remember the Thomas hearings but not a lot of the details. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as Kavanaugh, but it was nasty and Thomas wasn’t pulled. Bush might have stayed with Kavanaugh.
We didn’t have the social media environment in 1991 that we have now.
The polls were pretty clear after the hearings that the majority of the public believed Thomas and not Hill.
I hate to stick up for Jimmy Carter because I never cared for him, but not all of his economic policies were terrible. Carter deregulated trucking, railroads, and airlines. I was a little kid in the 1970’s and haven’t studied it much so I’m no authority, but Jimmy Carter may have been more of a free enterprise guy than Richard Nixon.
I hear “Nixon” and think wage and price controls/freeze.
Yeah. Nixon was not Mr. Conservative economics.
Django & Randy,
I hear you guys. However, Carter is a strange case. He made his appeal to the conservatives with the policies you outlined but it is very important to understand the context. LBJ had inherited the White House with an economy running like a rocket, with 3% unemployment. But big Lyndon wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to pass as much legislation as FDR had passed in his first 100 days. The macro-economic insanity of this couldn’t be explained to big Lyndon. This is what set off a massive inflation in the 1970s that Nixon was desperately trying to contain.
Carter’s deregulation of certain industries while sounding sort of free-market was balanced by the first hyper-regulation of the whole economy around unproven environmental fears. I have some direct knowledge of this as I was selling EPA certified instruments in the industrial heartland during Carter’s 4 years. The largest industrial corporations in the world were being hogtied by the EPA with Carter’s blessing. The unemployment numbers reached 10%. The economy kept sagging. They called it stagflation. I knew what it really was. When you use the EPA to bludgeon your own industry without cause you create a world of hurt. The winter of 1978 was the worst on record. The newly unleashed independent truckers were abandoning their new riggs in the snow. It was a sickening sight.
Instead of realizing how much pain he was causing, Carter doubled down and blamed the American people. He said we had a malaise. We should just snap out of it. I have never hated an American President like I hated Carter. Still do.
Regards,
Jim
No. He’s not “Presidential” if you mean the graying, dignified, well-spoken, scripted type.
But he is in the sense that he’s President.
But we lost “Presidential” when an actual sitting President decided to go on late night shows to promote his programs and connect with the youth. That was the beginning of the end for that sort of dignity. Now it’s Twitter and insults and all sorts of nonsense.
We’re in the gutter.
To me, Carter is the worst president in living memory with Obama coming in a close second, though I wouldn’t argue strongly with anyone who wanted to reverse that order. Still, Nixon created the EPA in 197o and handed that loaded gun to Carter. He probably didn’t expect it to be used as Carter used it.
<Cough> Reggie Love <Cough>
Just sayin’…
Yeah, and the golf buddies.
Please cite your authority for this slander about Reagan and the Bushes. Or please pull down your comment and apologize.
Please request a position as a mod if you aspire to be one.
Politico reported the story about GHW Bush, but hinted it was a rumor started by Hillary. I don’t particularly care whether it’s true or not.
Are you talking to me or @randywebster? If it was me, I was simply asking a question since I hadn’t heard any rumors of extra-marital affairs where Reagan or the Bushes are concerned. If you’re talking to Randy, he confirmed in another comment that he was referring to Democrat presidents with his comment, not Republican ones. I misunderstood and thought he was talking about all of the presidents since Carter, which is why I asked the question.