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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
But…Charlottesville! Shut up.
(The lie that will not die…and it is back in our comment sections today. Embarrassments galore.)
I think the problem is the idea that there is some mystical “Presidential” aura around the office. It’s not supposed to be that way. In a constitutional Republic like ours, the President is a public functionary, like a town manager. The aura stuff may have started with FDR, definitely with JFK and the whole Camelot nonsense. Rudy Giuliani was a great NYC mayor despite the fact that he doesn’t have any particular “Mayoral” dignity about him. The President shouldn’t be any more mystical than a big city mayor.
Obama is beloved of the left because he self-consciously oozes a sort of transcendent political dignity. They need that if we are to place ever more trust in Big Government. If we had, as some democracies do, the office of President for ceremonial roles and Prime Minister for official duties, Obama would be perfect for the President role. I think our system has been criticized for not dividing the ceremonial and administrative roles in the Chief Executive.
Anyway, those who want people to place their faith in Big Government hate Trump, because that faith requires a confidence game, and he’s shredding the idea of “The Presidency” (as Nixon said) as some sort of mystical office. Even Trump supporters recognize the man’s obvious character flaws, and if we have been getting along fine for several years now with him in office, how hard or critical can the office be? I think perhaps Trump’s most enduring legacy may be to blow a hole in the inflated pretensions of Presidents.
Using Lincoln as an example is pretty weak. He’s the man who killed about 600,000 men for the purported cause of “preserving the Union” which undermines self-determination, the entire purpose of our form of government. I think killing 600,000 people to undermine the nation’s values is about as unpresidential as one could get.
Agreed. Carter is still the worst President ever, though Obama is a close second.
I don’t recall Trump discussing whether he wears boxers or briefs.
No, he would be bowing and scraping to everyone again.
My favourite story of LBJ was his penchant for playing recordings of MLK’s adulterous affairs for his dinner guess care of FBI surveillance tapes. Now thats Presidential!
JFK going around with a Dr Feel Good whos job was to keep the President properly medicated while he handled affairs of state, while never telling the public about his health condition.
Carter was trash. I just read a book on Carter by one of his staffers that tried to rehabilitate him as some sort of middle of the road, deregulatory conservative. Randy is right, Carter did deregulate certain industries. But as Jim points out, he bludgeoned everything else.
I think Carter is awful but he’s probably also the weirdest president we’ve ever had. Far stranger than Trump. Carter is the closest we ever got to having someone like Beto in office. Just an odd guy that doesn’t fit in. A spineless milquetoast decision maker with no leadership skills.
I like that analogy.
Unlike Beto, Carter was intelligent, though. But no spine, and unamerican.
For some reason I don’t remember all that much about Carter. To me, he seemed to be a stiff-necked, self-righteous, micro-managing twit who was scared to death that someone might enjoy life in America.
President Carter was powerfully uninspiring.
Carter got dealt a bad hand. Monetary policy under Nixon was excessive. The oil embargoes created stagflation. Paul Volcker hiked interest rates and started a huge recession in 1980. The Carter years were the tough medicine to cure the problems started under LBJ and expanded under Nixon.
Obama on the other hand choose to violate the Constitution and use vast power of the government against his political opponents.
He also deregulated breweries! The only reason I’m grateful I voted for him.
Based on a few interactions that I had with his staff, this was entirely self-serving.
Really? There’s no such thing as a perfect hand, and he certainly made things much worse. Reagan turned things around really quickly, starting with inauguration day when the Iranians realized they were about to all die unless they returned the hostages.
Carter was a fool. Carter is a fool. Carter is the anti-Trump. He got pushed around by everyone, ruined the economy, and blamed the people for the failures of his administration.
Carter is the reason islamic terrorism expanded so far. Rather than destroying the Ayatollah’s anti-American theocracy, he convinced muslims all over the world that the United States wouldn’t stop them no matter how bad they got.
Billy Beer!
We elected the wrong Carter….
I don’t know about that. He inspired this song:
Every President has some successes. Some are even consequential.
Carter’s deregulations were and continue to be important. We owe it to him to acknowledge those accomplishments.
That said, he was largely ineffective.
Assuming the voters decide what is “presidential”, then yes, he is presidential.
I remember one of Carter’s challenges as: he was closer to the center than the Congress. This was a House energized by the election of the “Watergate class” of Democrats. Plus the defeat of Ford. They were determined to expand Johnson’s Great Society.
Carter tried to chart a course of moderation without the support of his own party. His reluctance to spend, spend, spend, antagonized his own party. His foreign policy views, which appeared to be largely cribbed from Latin American Catholic Social Justice clerics, offended the Republicans who viewed Nixon’s foreign policy realism as a signal achievement of the previous 10 years.
I take some comfort in knowing circumstances tend to raise up leaders we don’t know we need. I don’t think we could have had Reagan in 1980, if we hadn’t had Carter in 1976.
I wasn’t voting then, but I think Reagan could have beat Carter.
He couldn’t defeat Ford.
Reagan *did* beat Carter.
The republican party elite wouldn’t let him past Ford. I bet if they hadn’t stopped him, the people would have loved him.
You’re right. I think he would have beat him the first time, too!
So we’re cool with supporting a primary challenge to a Republican incumbent president seeking a second term? Cool.
Of course, may the best man win. In a vote. And not by party elite shenanigans.
Agree.
(P.S. The party elite have nothing but shenanigans in their playbook…to which they cling so very bitterly. In related news, never forget Mississippi 2014.)
What happened in Mississippi in 2014?