How history remembers Trump’s wins
Taking the true measure of a president, governor, mayor or even a corporate CEO usually requires the luxury of being able to wait and see how a chief executive’s leadership survives the test of time.
Often it takes 10 years to get a good sense of it—as we learned from the lesson of Harry Truman’s presidency. He left office with very low ratings in the polls. But when historians looked back and saw how his visionary courage led to the revitalization of wartorn Europe (including World War II’s vanquished Germany and Japan), they rated Truman a near-great president.
But it took not 10 years—just a mere 10 days—for us to get a revealing glimpse of how President Donald Trump’s leadership will be measured by the test of time. Indeed, the same month that treated us to a stunning total eclipse of the sun also gifted our workaday pundits with a head-start on history.
On Aug. 15, President Trump signed one of those seemingly ho-hum executive orders that journalists and talking-heads usually ignore in this era of click-bait news; except for the fact that Trump chose to call attention to it for reasons that were really about politics, not policy. For Trump’s executive order was revoking an executive order his predecessor, Barack Obama, had signed in 2015.
(Time out: Regular readers remember I have frequently criticized Obama’s leadership shortcomings—from his Syria red-line that must have been drawn with disappearing ink, to the fact that he still hasn’t recommended how he’d fix the flaws in his Obamacare health care program. But today we are focusing on the only president we presently have.)
This time, Trump was revoking Obama’s executive order creating a federal flood risk management standard. Obama’s order had required that on projects that are planned for flood zones and are receiving federal funds, builders must strongly consider risk-management standards before the project can be approved; it also required that new structures must be elevated high enough to keep them above anticipated rising flood waters.
Standing in the gold-and-pink-marbled lobby of his Manhattan Trump Tower, the president focused reporters’ attention to his order revoking Obama’s order.
He said new federally funded projects would “no longer” face “one job-killing delay after another.”
Trump made no mention of how his leadership decision would make Americans safer in the event of catastrophic floods.
Or if he ever even considered the consequences of his decision. Whatever; once again he was tossing a political cookie to his base supporters who cannot stand Obama.
Also his right-wing base that hates federal regulations, regulators and red-tape. It all seemed politically smart and safe. What could go wrong?
Ten days later, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and the entire Texas Gulf Coast, flooding America’s fourth-largest city with the most severe rainstorms in the recorded history of North America. Heartbreaking news coverage flooded across our compassionate country. We watched devastating reports of tragedies that befell fellow Americans whose homes had been built in flood zones.
It was all so sad. Once again, of course, Americans were helping Americans, because that’s who we are and what we do. Americans helped firsthand if they were able to get to the devastated area to participate in the rescue and recovery.
And those who couldn’t go in-person helped by donating dollars, food, clothes and so on.
Trump focused his politically myopic vision on another leadership challenge (see also: diversion): Immigration. He told Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce that his administration was doing something he had promised to do during his presidential campaign—but had then given wink-and-nod assurances that he wouldn’t really do after all. He was ending Obama’s “DACA” program. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order allowed undocumented youths who had been brought to America as children and had lived lawful, productive, tax-paying, military-serving American lives ever since, to live in the USA without fear of being deported.
Trump was instantly stopping all new applicant approvals and is giving Congress just six months to enact a law legalizing DACA.
After his decision was announced, Trump said he loved those kids, and would “revisit” the decision if Congress didn’t legalize it.
Trump, who loved to tell his campaign crowds they’d soon become tired of winning, hasn’t successfully persuaded his all-Republican Congress to give him one significant policy win.
His only leadership victories came when he persuaded his pen to sign an order revoking an Obama order.
For Trump, making America great again has turned out to mean unmaking Obama’s legacy. No mas.