Opinionline: Grading the 1-year presidency
Still Not Hillary
A year later, President Trump’s even more not Hillary Clinton than he was when first elected. The childish effort by Democrats to escape into fantasies of undoing the election via impeachment or 25th Amendment medical disability demonstrates that their party isn’t ready to govern anytime soon. With Trump in the White House, the plague of sexual abuse in the worlds of news and entertainment media has been brought to light, when it almost certainly would have been kept quiet under Hillary so as to avoid embarrassing associations with Bill Clinton’s past offenses. Glenn Harlan Reynolds University of Tennessee law professor
Docked from straight A
What has really earned Trump his top-tier grade is that list of pen-and-phone leftovers from the Obama years that we don’t have to put up with anymore. Title IX kangaroo courts lacking the basics of due process for your college-student son accused of rape after a date went badly? No more. Forcing K-12 public schools to let biological males use the girls’ bathroom? Gone. No more Paris climate agreement. No more U.S.-jobs-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. No more forcing nuns to buy birth control under Obamacare. I do feel obliged to dock Trump’s A grade a notch after the panic that ensued over his dangling amnesty for 800,000 illegalimmigrant “dreamers” and his entertaining even the possibility of accepting the “Gang of Six” bill. Fortunately — and here we have Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to thank — that now seems to be safely down the “shithole.” Charlotte Allen Columnist for “First Things” magazine
Can’t stay out of his own way
For a newcomer to the game of politics, Trump has shown himself to be quite skilled at it. He took time out from battling with a biased and hostile news media to rack up a respectable list of accomplishments — putting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, backing off the Iran deal, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and pulling off the Band-Aid of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But Trump also showed repeatedly that he is his own worst enemy by saying, doing and, yes, tweeting the wrong thing. With every outrageous spasm, he hurts his presidency and its agenda. Ruben Navarrette The Washington Post Writers Group
President Pence
Trump has defied all odds to survive a year as president, and he did it mostly by copying off of Mike Pence’s paper. You could spend all your executive time trying to name a policy or an appointment that would be different if Pence were in the Oval Office — from gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to attempting (and failing) to ban transgender soldiers. Jason Sattler Columnist for The National Memo
Hideous stain
It only took one year for Trump to earn the position of worst president in U.S. history. Whether this 71-year-old man can grow, learn or change seems more unlikely than ever. What is certain beyond doubt is that Trump has already left a hideous stain on American history. Erasing it will be the work of generations. Gabriel Schoenfeld Senior adviser to the 2012 Romney presidential campaign
Season 1
Trump ends his first year embroiled in a debate over exactly what racist phrase he used to slander entire countries, leaning on a doctor’s assurance that his seeming madness is not due to cognitive decline, and fending off reports that he paid a porn star hush money. Americans deserve better than a president longing for reluctant Norwegians to contribute their whiteness to America as he insults people of color at home and around the globe. Ellis Cose Author of “The Rage of a Privileged Class”
Season 2
Season 1 of “President Trump, the Reality TV Show” ended with lots of explosive potential plots for Season 2. Will Trump trigger a shooting war with North Korea and/or Iran? How will the Mueller investigations end? How many other porn stars signed nondisclosure agreements with Trump? Season 2 might end with a real cliffhanger: large scale Russian intervention in the 2018 election helping the GOP to victory, leaving our political system teetering towards implosion. Do we have enough popcorn for (at least) three more years of this? Steven Strauss Visiting professor at Princeton