Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Local experts debate how Trump will be remembered
No matter what you think about President Donald Trump, it’s clear his time in the White House is not quite like that of any president who came before him. During his term in office he shattered all sorts of traditions and norms.
As he leaves office and we reflect on what it all meant, the answer is complicated.
What, exactly, his legacy will be depends on whom you ask. While that’s typically the case and people often view presidencies based on their political allegiances, Trump’s legacy, like much of his presidency, seems to be a lesson in extremes.
The Reading Eagle asked a handful of local politicians, party leaders and political experts for their take on Trump’s presidency.
What the experts say
Political science professors Dr. Tim Blessing of Alvernia University and Dr. Randall Newnham of Penn State Berks agree it will take a long time to figure out what the Trump legacy will ultimately mean.
But Blessing said the more immediate reaction is clearly rather negative.
“Right now, his legacy is pretty toxic,” said Blessing. “And I would certainly expect it to stay that way as long as my generation and the next generation and maybe the generation down after that are still alive. The real test will be when the people who were alive at the time have passed.”
As an example, Blessing said he just finished teach
ing a course on the presidency of Richard Nixon and can attest that his time in office is viewed much differently by his students than by someone like himself who lived through it. “For progressives, he will be the worst president of all time,” he said of Trump. “And for many conservatives, he will be seen as somebody who tried to pull power back from the center and enacted more realistic foreign policy. So it’s going to be a very split legacy at this point.”
Blessing said the complexity of Trump’s legacy will mirror his time in office. For instance:
• His supporters liked that he spoke directly to them using social media but admit that his posts were often controversial.
• He often attacked organizations that were fighting for civil rights but had more support from African American voters than any other Republican president in some time.
• He was apparently difficult to work for but also sought advice from those in his inner circle before making important decisions.
“For every negative thing you can find, you can also find a positive,” Blessing said. “But in the immediate term those things will have a pronounced negative legacy. It will probably take some time. And because I’ve lived through the Trump presidency I’m not going to be as dispassionate as I should be.”
Blessing said the dust has to settle first and that there are many political factions out there that are going to dispute the legacy.
“In fact, I can’t think of many presidents who have left the White House with as much conflict about them as exists now,” he said
Newnham agrees with that assessment.
“I think he will be known as one of the more divisive presidents, which I think is going to be a problem for his legacy,” he said.
But not everyone feels that way. On one hand, Newnham said, there are his supporters.
“I think his supporters would say that they got Trump in there to shake things up, to change the old way of doing business. And that he has achieved,” he said.
And he has certainly
achieved what were traditionally conservative priorities such as appointing a lot more conservative judges, greatly reducing regulations and lowering taxes for businesses, Newnham said. Newnham said Trump’s supporters knew he would be rough around the edges and knew he would say things that didn’t sound great. They liked that because it was part of shaking up the system.
Newnham said there is no doubt that Trump followed through on a lot of the promises he made to his base. But the question ultimately became just how much do you want to shake up the system.
“I think for a lot of people, maybe some Republicans, too, when you shake up the system to the point where his supporters are attacking the Capitol building, that may be something that says we shook up the system too much,” he said. “It’s one thing to shake up the system, it’s another thing to tear down the system.”
So where you draw the line means a lot there, Newnham said.
“The system is not just elites or bureaucrats, the system is our Constitution and our democracy,” he said. “Shaking up some of the fundamental foundations of democracy like the peaceful transition of power is part of that.”
Newnham said clearly there are still people on board from Trump’s base who are quick to point out the president’s achievements, which some on the other side wouldn’t think of as achievements, but that’s always the case.
“But when the history books are written and they’re trying to sum up the Trump administration in a few paragraphs, it’s kind of hard to believe that one of those first sentences won’t be about him being the first president to be impeached twice,” he said. “They won’t likely won’t be mentioning that he rolled back business regulations in the first paragraph of the story.”
What Republicans say
Clay Breece, chairman of the Berks County Republican Party, said he expects Trump will be remembered for providing an optimistic alternative to the “End America” agenda that he says has been pushed by those on the far left of the political spectrum.
He credited Trump with bringing working class voters back to the Republican base. He said the president’s ability to connect with the men and women who were forgotten by the Democratic Party is the main reason why he was able to defy all expectations by capturing the presidency.
“The Republican Party is now the America First party,” he said. “We are stronger now than we have been in a long time. And Trump is responsible for making the Republican Party the America First party.”
Trump managed to pull off victories in 2016 in several key states that had been considered strongholds for Democrats — one of the more important shifts that helped drive his improbable journey to the White House. To do that the real estate mogul relied on building support in suburban counties that had traditionally supported the Democratic Party.
Trump won those voters over with his promises and kept many of them, Breece said. He said there were too many achievements to list but named just a few that will dominate the president’s legacy for centuries to come.
According to Breece, some of the promises Trump delivered on were:
• Cutting taxes.
• Introducing tax reform.
• Cutting regulations.
• Securing the country’s border.
• Putting conservatives on the federal courts.
• Getting out of the Iran deal.
• Moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
• Negotiating better trade deals.
Breece added that how Trump handled the biggest crisis of his presidency will remain a shining example for others to emulate.
“I think when you look at how he handled the COVID crisis, Trump was able to mobilize the private sector in a way that no other president has ever done since probably World War II,” he said. “He mobilized the private sector in a way that bureaucrats could have never imagined.”
Breece also praised Trump for eliminating the cumbersome obstacles that came with developing an effective vaccine.
“No one believed it could be done in less than a year. Trump delivered on that,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican who represents parts of Berks County, said there are things that really stick out about the Trump presidency.
“First, he brought a business approach to the White House — something people never saw before,” he said. “He got a lot done. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it. He got results. He found ways to get things done rather than talking about getting things done and blaming others when they didn’t.”
Meuser said Trump had a long list of accomplishments. He focused on three.
• The economy before COVID arrived. Everyone was in better financial shape, he said.
• He spent money on rebuilding the military, started the space force and dealt with the dangers of ISIS.
• The peace treaties in the Middle East and taking on China to make sure that manufacturing would come back to America.
Meuser said the fact that Trump was not beholden to special interests allowed him to focus on the needs of the people who voted for him. And that meant he gave people hope who hadn’t voted in years, or maybe ever.
“They were the people who felt forgotten, and he made them feel as if they had a voice. That was inspiring to a lot of people,” he said.
What Democrats say
Kevin Boughter, chairman of the Berks County Democratic Party, has a very different view of the Trump presidency.
“Disarray is the best word to describe his presidency,” he said. “The whole entire executive branch of the federal government has been in disarray these last four years. He was constantly firing people, not knowing how to be president and not really caring to learn how to be president.”
Boughter said the Trump presidency showed why we can’t have someone run the country like a business. He said the country isn’t something you can run badly, then declare bankruptcy when it doesn’t work out.
“Even the things that happened that some people may say were good, I don’t think he had anything to do with,” he said. “He didn’t choose three justices for the Supreme Court, he just went along with who other people wanted.”
Boughter said one of his most defining failures of Trump’s presidency was his response to the COVID pandemic. He said he may have gotten Operation Warp Speed up and running, but then he just walked away.
“There was no focus on testing and tracing at the federal level,” he said. “He put all that on the states to figure out. If there was ever a time for our federal government to take the lead on something, this was it and he just walked away.
“He never wanted the job, he just wanted the title. That’s all there is to it.”