TAKING STOCK OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY, THROUGH THE BLURRY LENS OF HISTORY
Writing the history of presidents is dangerous business. It requires placing events of the past into context for today’s readers, while fighting off biases and personal opinions. Chronicling the presidency of someone as controversial and unconventional as Donald J. Trump is downright perilous.
When I reached out to prominent historians to write a Trump chapter for the book The Presidents and the Constitution, which was first published in 2016 and for which I serve as editor, I received a barrage of rejections. Trump was either beloved or reviled; why go near it? A few authors expressed interest if they could trash the Trump presidency. This book, which features a chapter on every president starting with George Washington, prides itself on being fair and detached. An intentional hatchet job was not an option.
So I wrote the chapter myself. If readers find it too solicitous, or too critical of the missteps that left a stain on Mr. Trump’s presidency, I can only blame myself.
In the beginning
The chapter covers Mr. Trump’s ascension to politics from his status as reality TV celebrity, to the final days when he left the White House refusing to acknowledge his defeat and to attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. How does one fairly sum up such a complicated presidency? Here’s the first takeaway: This was not a surreal dream. Donald Trump’s loud, brash, at times shocking words and actions were real. They were part of a public persona that he cultivated intentionally.
Moreover, despite the fringe elements he attracted along the way, Donald Trump successfully gained support from a solid half of the American public. They liked his flamboyance and showmanship. But they also agreed with the nonconformist policy positions he staked out, and with the general notion that someone needed to clean up what they perceived to be our rotten political system.
It’s wrong to view the Trump presidency as a cartoon-like story of a highly-polarizing figure wearing a red MAGA cap and running amok. Rather, the story of the Trump presidency is more accurately that of a highly skilled political operative who channeled the fears and anxieties of a large swath of the American electorate, and in doing so became the first populist (and de facto independent) candidate to become president.
Donald Trump was a political chameleon. Throughout his career he identified, and registered, as a Democrat, Republican and Independent, and as a member of the Reform Party. In 1987, he floated his own name as a vice-presidential candidate to run with Republican George W. Bush. He then watched intently as Ross Perot ran as an independent in 1992 and forged the Reform Party in 1996, appealing to white, disaffected, non-college graduates.
Trump briefly entered the 2000 election as the Reform Party candidate to replace Perot. He even appeared on the ballot in two states. He told one Los Angeles Times reporter: “The only strategy is, I’ll be on television a lot.” Mr. Trump ultimately withdrew, but gained further fame and name recognition as the host of the NBC reality show, The Apprentice. He recalibrated his strategy.
To view Donald Trump strictly as a Republican figure, then, is only partially true. Indeed, it’s clear he doesn’t care if he blows up the Republican Party during his upcoming presidential run, if he feels it would further his own interests. For Trump, the parties were always a vessel into which he could pour his aspirations to attain his ultimate goal: the Oval Office.
First of his kind
Mr. Trump’s brand of populism was unique among American presidents, even those remembered as proto-populists, like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt. In its grim, pessimistic assessment of contemporary American society, the Trump movement more closely resembled the Know Nothing Party — a nativist political movement in the 1850s that was strongly anti-Catholic and anti-immigration — and Perot’s homespun, idiosyncratic, anti-elite movement in the 1990s. No such movement had ever propelled someone to the White House.
Two things helped Mr. Trump’s approach to take hold. First, there had been a growing political disenchantment among white working-class Americans who felt government in Washington had failed them, and who hadn’t been activated by a presidential candidate since Perot, and Patrick Buchanan before him. Second, Trump benefitted enormously from the invention and proliferation of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook. With smartphone in hand, Mr. Trump — a tech neophyte but an expert at communications and branding — was able tospread his message far and wide.
For all of the caricatures of Trump as an unhinged buffoon, he was a master of his art. He managed to inspire a strong following within his base and shape the Republican Party in his own image, perhaps more so than any predecessor. A big question that faces him and the country now is whether he still has those skills in the same measure, or if the magic has left him.
Those appalled by Mr. Trump’s words, deeds and tweets can rightly point to hundreds of instances in which he obliterated presidential norms and seemed to act on impulse rather than on sober advice from trusted advisors. (The number of Cabinet officials and advisors who quit or were fired during Mr. Trump’s presidency set new records.) Yet Trump attracted loyal followers precisely because he shattered norms and thumbed his nose at established protocols. Trump was a master at reconciling contradictions and turning them to his advantage.
In reality, the thrice-married ultraelite who lived in a Manhattan penthouse and in opulent clubs had little in common with the common man. Yet he formed a powerful bond through social media, fiery rallies and a direct appeal to the deeply disillusioned, to whom no national figure had spoken in some time. And, for all of his flaws, he delivered on plenty of his bold, braggadocious pledges.
Divisive accomplishments
Of course, Mr. Trump also brought daily drama and consistent chaos to the office. His disdain for formal protocols in conducting governmental business, and his penchant for blurting out major policy decisions by tweets, caused turmoil within his administration. He refused to make public his tax returns; declined to divest ownership of his global business empire, allowing his children to be placeholders; permitted his company to strike deals with foreign governments; and sparked unprecedented issues under the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution, which prohibits officeholders from receiving anything of value from foreign states and their leaders.
His promise to build a wall at the Mexican border on Mexico’s dime never panned out. He proclaimed entire major news organizations to be purveyors of “fake news” and waged war on the national press; he leveled verbal assaults on the “deep state” and high-ranking U.S. military officials; and he otherwise cast doubt on trusted American institutions. In the realm of foreign affairs, Mr. Trump’s gut-based method of shrugging off briefings and belittling world leaders and countries that had been faithful allies destabilized relationships and dealt a blow to the nation’s global standing.
Yet, if one divorces the personality from the office, one can see why a large segment of the American populace found Trump to be appealing: He delivered a veritable jackpot of staunchly conservative judicial appointments, including three Supreme Court justices. His tackling of the immigration problem on the U.S. border, albeit filled with hyperbole and bluster, nonetheless put its finger on a serious issue that had gone unresolved for decades. He championed gun rights by opposing the passage of federal gun control legislation.
He frequently uttered words and took positions that appeared racist and offensive to minority groups of every sort — yet supporters pointed out that Black and Hispanic unemployment numbers dipped to new lows, and Latino
voters in particular shifted toward the GOP during his presidency. And perhaps most importantly for average citizens, the economy roared during much of Trump’s presidency. His supporters pointed to more money in their wallets to buy groceries and essentials for daily life.
For better or for worse, Mr. Trump also forever shaped the role of presidents vis-à-vis the U.S. Constitution, pushing relentlessly to create a more muscular chief executive. He issued an executive order to create a controversial ban on individuals from Muslim countries seeking to travel into the U.S., purportedly to protect the country from terrorists. He won a decisive victory at the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), as Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that federal law “exudes deference” to the executive branch when it comes to national security.
Mr. Trump stymied the House committee seeking to investigate his “perfect phone call” to Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelensky, in which Mr. Trump sought to condition aid to that country on providing a political favor to him. At Mr. Trump’s direction, House subpoenas served on White House aides and other executive branch officials were ignored, directly challenging Congress’s oversight role and skewing the system of checks and balances to favor the president.
Perhaps most significantly, Trump reshaped the federal judiciary with stunning effectiveness, packing the federal appellate courts with fifty-four jurists handpicked by the conservative Federalist Society, and adding a trio of justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — to the Supreme Court. These justices would immediately tilt the balance to make it one of the most staunchly conservative courts in American history.
For those who detest Donald Trump, understanding why good, honest, honorable citizens voted for him is an essential part of the story. Without that piece, it’s impossible to understand what fueled the engine of the Trump machine, and what could motivate people to support him, or candidates who emulate him, in 2024 and beyond.
Losing the mandate of heaven
And the truth is that without the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a high likelihood Donald Trump would have been reelected. His botched handling of that crisis, typified by his disastrous press conferences and his battles with the government’s own scientists, showed the limits of his intuitive and bombastic approach to governing. And the televised images of corpses in refrigerator trucks, certainly didn’t help. Yet, even here there is a flip side: Mr. Trump does deserve credit for accelerating development of the vaccine, although that victory came too late.
Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden by seven million votes in the 2020 election showed how much he had lost his grip on the presidency, and much of the electorate. This defeat was only worsened by his refusal to accept the results. Fourteen presidents in American history have failed to win reelection. Each of those chief executives, starting with John Adams in 1800, willingly accepted the results and participated in the peaceful transfer of power. There’s been only one glaring exception: The 45th president, Donald J. Trump.
Finally, Mr. Trump’s actions in stirring up the crowd leading up to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and his seeming indifference to the grave danger unleashed on his own Vice President and Capitol Police officers, was a bridge too far even for many of his most loyal Republican supporters.
This book chapter on the Trump presidency does not extend into the post-presidential years. It is not about potential indictments for stashing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and for seeking to interfere with the electoral count in Georgia, nor is it about the massive civil lawsuits pending against the Trump business empire. Those will be left to future historians. The Trump chapter in this new edition of “The Presidents and the Constitution” concludes with a simple observation. It is still the best this author can muster, until the passage of time further clarifies this extraordinary period in American history:
“Like the forty-four presidents who came before him, Trump was not perfect by any measure; nor was he all bad in his role. He amassed an enormous following and struck a chord with tens of millions of people who desired change. Yet no matter what salutary things Trump may have accomplished during his four years in the White House, history will view him as the writer of his own political epitaph. Donald J. Trump accomplished during his final weeks in office what Democrats and his political adversaries were never able to achieve: Through his own rash actions, he administered a final, disastrous blow to his own norm breaking presidency and legacy.”