Reaping Whirlwinds
No American presidency, thus far, has been all good or all bad. We are an imperfect people with an imperfect system of government, so it makes sense that our leaders are, also, imperfect. Life and the human beings who live it are unpredictable and unruly, and it’s rare for anything to go according to plan. The best any administration can do is seek to faithfully execute the office and wind up with a final balance sheet closer to perfection than chaos.
Certain presidents have done a better job of this than others. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama all, generally, found success and left the country in better shape than they found it. Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon all, generally, left the country in a more chaotic state. It can also take time for us to see the results of an administration and its policies, and history has redeemed numerous presidents who left office maligned if not downright hated.
All of this is to say, contemporary judgements of presidents are often difficult to make, shaded by partisan emotion, and subject to our nation’s notoriously short memory and attention span. Presidents also deserve a certain amount of grace for facing the single most difficult job in the world and dealing with unimaginably complex surprises and crises. Be that as it may, here are some thoughts as we transition from the 46th to the 47th presidency of the United States.
Promises unfulfilled
Joe Biden leaves office unpopular, withdrawn, and defeated. He initially said that he ran for the presidency because he saw us in a “battle for the soul of our nation.” It is a battle he lost. I proudly voted for Biden in 2020 and I had high hopes for his administration. Four years later, I am more than willing to admit that I am disappointed and disagreed with numerous decisions he made. The Afghanistan withdrawal, while necessary (and negotiated by the previous administration) was a fiasco; the amount of pandemic relief spending probably added to the speed and scale of post-COVID inflation; he should not have pardoned his son, Hunter, after promising to respect the outcome of his trials; he should not have run for a second term, knowing he was too old. These are all genuine failings and missteps and I freely acknowledge my frustration with them.
Aside from policy, the Biden administration never tuned in to the frequency of the nation’s mood and often sounded distant and out of touch with the real issues Americans faced. They should have done a better job addressing illegal immigration and taking action to adapt when their policies caused a surge. They should have taken much more accountability for the pain inflation caused and continues to cause across the country. Even if presidents are not all-powerful when it comes to the economy, they should be able to make themselves a visible and vigorous presence to instill confidence during hard times. Statistics and white papers do not help families struggling to afford groceries and medicines. And they shouldn’t have dismissed voters’ concerns about his age and obvious decline. Waiting for a disaster of a debate performance to force their hand left Democrats with too little time and too much confusion to mount an effective campaign against a resurgent Donald Trump.
But, as I said at the beginning, no presidency is all good or all bad. It was Biden and his team who led us successfully out of the darkest days of the pandemic. Many of us have already forgotten how frightening and uncertain life felt when he took office, but the administration’s rollout of the COVID vaccines and reopening of the country will be historic achievements. I think the Biden administration’s Infrastructure spending will continue to pay dividends across the country for years. It will often be the kind of quiet, boring work that is hard to get excited about but that is necessary for day-to-day life.
I think the Biden administration did a lot of good in foreign policy and helped us gain a better footing against China in certain areas, like semiconductors, AI, and supply chains. I think they did a remarkably good job managing the start of the largest land war in Europe since the end of World War 2. Not only is NATO reinvigorated, it added two new members who were previously unthinkable in Sweden and Finland. The war in Ukraine has been catastrophic, but it has proven an essential learning ground for our military about what war fighting looks like in the 2020’s. Vladimir Putin is bogged down in a grinding war of attrition, reliant on North Korean troops for cannon fodder, instead of looking like a brilliant tactician following a lightning strike victory over Kiev.
And Biden’s team threaded the needle in the Middle East following Hamas’ barbaric attacks on Israel, and the Israeli’s subsequent scorched earth campaign of retribution. The slaughter and destruction there are obvious tragedies, but I believe things could have gotten much worse and blown up into a larger conflict without the intense engagement of American diplomats and the strength of American forces in the region. And in the final week of Biden’s presidency, his team managed to get both sides to agree to a ceasefire deal that can hopefully end the killing and return the hostages. Ukraine and Gaza are messy and imperfect situations, but they both had the potential to turn into the spark of global conflict. That we avoided this outcome in both cases is a clear victory.
The last and final victory for Biden is surely the most painful. His acceptance of November’s election results and his commitment, verbally and in practice, to a peaceful transfer of power, is a vital and courageous act of patriotism. Vice president Kamala Harris deserves equal praise and respect for accepting the outcome and conceding defeat. Their willingness to abide by the rules of our system and to accept the outcome of free and fair elections makes them better Americans and greater patriots than Trump could ever be.
Rule by trashy reality TV
So what comes next?
Well, obviously, it’s impossible to say. But we do have some indications, and it’s worth discussing the way the wind is blowing in our nation today. That Trump’s second inauguration will be held inside the Capital rotunda (because apparently the snowflakes don’t like being cold) is a repugnant shame. This is the same rotunda his supporters stormed and ransacked in an effort to overturn the results of a free and fair election in 2021. Despite their best efforts to whitewash our memories of that day, January 6th was not “a day of love.” It was an attempted insurrection by traitors to our Constitution who should have all been prosecuted for treason. And Trump’s propaganda about a “stolen election” and “voter fraud” led to his ultimate incitement of the mob that day. That Trump’s inauguration also takes place on Martin Luther King Jr. day is a perverse insult to one of our greatest citizens. It is also a chance to consider the contrast in their characters.
We should not be in this situation today. Donald Trump should have been convicted by the Senate under the articles of impeachment from the House and he should have been barred from ever holding public office again. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress proved themselves cowards and lickspittles over and over and over again, placing the pursuit of raw power above any sense of justice or duty to our nation. And so, in the end, Trump got away with it.
He did not get away with everything, and he carries the distinction of being the first convicted felon to enter the White House. He remains, as he was in 2016, a hateful, ignorant, bigoted, opportunistic charlatan who uses and manipulates everyone and everything for his own personal gratification. He is a criminal who would gladly see our Constitution thrown into the trash, along with his McDonald’s wrappers, if it made him more money or brought him some vindictive glee. He represents the absolute worst characteristics and impulses of our culture and has actively made our country a meaner, crueler, and more selfish place to live.
Trump’s inauguration also represents the inauguration of an America I find difficult to recognize from the one I grew up in. I believe Trump himself is an autocratic threat to our system of government, but his ascendence also cements our new American oligarchy. Men like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg will now wield more power and influence over our collective lives with zero accountability. The speed at which the nation’s CEO’s and billionaires flocked to kiss the ring at Mar a Lago this winter demonstrated the hollowness of corporate “values” and their pandering to principles other than profit.
Our economy has moved towards consolidation and monopoly control for decades, Trump is not the cause. But I worry he will take down the few remaining guardrails and allow the likes of Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Walmart, and others to prey upon us with reckless abandon. One of the more insidious aspects of Trump from the beginning is that he is not wrong to identify a large part of our country has been left behind by globalization and is at the mercy of corporate greed; but he has no intention of helping those parts of our country, he just wants to ride their resentment to power.
Politically, our government is about to be run by Fox News’ daytime lineup. The quality of Trump’s cabinet nominees would make most hiring managers fall out of their ergonomic chairs with laughter. But, with enough money and threats, many of them seem destined for confirmation. Is our world safer with Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense? His best arguments for the job are 1.) I promise I’ll quit drinking and 2.) it wasn’t, technically, rape. Or Kash Patel as head of the FBI? Or Pam Bondi as Attorney General? Or putting RFK Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services? Seriously? The anti-vaccine brain worm guy? We will soon be led by the least of us. My worry is not just that I disagree, vehemently, with many of these people’s qualifications and outlooks, but that in a complex and dangerous world, they will leave us vulnerable and unprepared.
A new Roaring Twenties
With Trump’s return, we seem on the cusp of a new era of freewheeling, winner-takes-all debauchery. If the past 15 years following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling represented a new Gilded Age, we may now be entering a new Roaring Twenties. And while the flappers, speak easies, and stock market booms were all fun and exciting, they were also noisy distractions from the rot and dysfunction underneath that, ultimately, led to a crash.
For now, America is once again a place where might makes right and only money is allowed to talk. Mao Zedong once said “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” In Trump’s America, we might say political power grows out of the zeroes in your bank account.
What comes next? I don’t know, but I’m worried. Trump’s administration will not be all good or all bad, but it could certainly be bad for a lot of us. What can we do? Hold on to the good things in our lives and within ourselves. Practice good citizenship. Stay engaged and pay attention, but don’t make yourself sick. Remember the kind of America you want to live in and do what you can to cultivate it back into existence. Do not be bullied into silence or submission and do not accept the devil’s bargain of our times to trade apathy for convenience. We are living through an epochal change. Our job is to safeguard and shepherd the history, values, and culture we hold dear to the other side. In the meantime, have courage, have patience, and have hope.
America sowed the wind by electing Trump a second time. Today, we reap the whirlwind.
