Forget the polls. And social media. And the pundits on TV and radio. The best gauge for judging Donald Trump’s success or failure as president – and his electoral chances in November – requires a much broader lens than Morning Joe or the New York Times.
The truth is, voters will never judge Trump as harshly as the media does because their standards are more existential – they always are.
The same is true of historians, at least those outside the left-wing academy. They, like voters, will have to recognize that Trump has been engaged in a one-man balancing act unprecedented in American history, and all without a net.
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It’s hardly been a perfect performance and definitely not pretty to watch. But in fact, Trump has been doing the jobs that FDR, Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman each had to do, all at once. \
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Like FDR, Trump has had to deal with an unprecedented domestic crisis with global implications, one that has shattered people’s confidence and certainty about the future. In Roosevelt’s case, the Great Depression; in Trump’s, COVID-19 and the Great Confinement.
Like FDR, Trump has learned that the advice of so-called “experts” on dealing with the crisis has been largely worthless; while the opposition party has made every wild accusation (remember that FDR was denounced as both a Communist and a fascist dictator) and thrown every obstacle in his way, hoping that he would fail.
Like Truman, Trump has had to alert Americans to a growing threat from abroad, when most Americans are weary of global commitments and only want some peace and stability. In Truman’s case, it was the growing Soviet threat after World War II; in Trump’s, it’s China.
Imagine a president confronting the Great Depression, the Cold War and the riots of 1968 in one fell swoop, and you have some idea of what Trump is dealing with in the run-up to the election in November.
Trump’s had to make us all aware that Beijing is not only responsible for the spread and severity of the COVID pandemic but uses every opportunity, including the pandemic, to displace America as the world’s superpower and impose tyranny over freedom.
Finally, like Reagan Trump came into office determined to restore American pride and economic growth after a predecessor who discounted both. In Reagan’s case, it was the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years; in Trump’s, it was the Obama administration’s self-imposed mission of “managing American decline” and presiding over the slowest recovery from an economic recession in U.S. history.
Democrats and the media threw every possible scandal at Reagan in order to bring him down (remember Iran-Contra?). They’ve done the same with Trump, while he took on the double burden of having to restore the American economy not once but now a second time after the COVID-19 lockdown – even as rioters and demonstrators bring our urban centers to the brink of anarchy.
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Imagine a president confronting the Great Depression, the Cold War and the riots of 1968 in one fell swoop, and you have some idea of what Trump is dealing with in the run-up to the election in November.
How has Trump done? Certainly, Trump’s bedside manner is not as reassuring as FDR’s or Reagan’s, but the challenges have been bigger. Everyone, even Republicans, wanted to recover from the Great Depression. However, as the recent (and deleted) tweets of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., reveal, Trump’s blue state opponents are willing to break the economy if that’s what it would take to stop his reelection.
And unlike Truman, Trump doesn’t have a Deep State cadre who loyally served his predecessor (in Truman’s case, FDR) to depend on. Just the opposite: he’s had to build a reliable team from scratch, through a trial-and-error process that’s hurt his image and slowed his agenda. John Bolton is just the latest example.
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Still, Democrats have to worry that when voters wake up in October, they’ll see a president who has managed not one, not two, but three heavy lifts, however imperfectly — while Democrats did their best to shutter the economy and let their radical offspring run wild in the streets.
The choice will look stark. Do you want Trump or Seattle? Voters may find the answer isn’t so complicated, after all.