Trump after Two Years

I thought  in 2016 that Donald Trump was a poor candidate to be president and that several of his opponents in the primaries were better choices.  However like many others I saw him as the lesser evil in the general election and  hoped he would defeat Hillary Clinton. I did not vote for him but would have if I had lived in a state where the outcome would have been close.  Being in a safely Republican state  made it easy for me to cast a protest vote for Gary Johnson  who would not have been a good president but had some good ideas and  seemed a  better human being than either Trump or Clinton.

Now that Trump has been president for almost two years,  I still think his winning was a far better outcome than getting Hillary Clinton as president.   His actions and policies on taxes, regulation, and lessening  the burden of government have been mainly good. He has appointed judges who are more likely to respect individual rights and the Constitution than those appointed by Clinton would have been.  While generally wrong about  international trade, he has been partially right about  the special case of China where something should be done about that government’s industrial espionage and  theft of intellectual property and where dependency on a hostile foreign power for supplying essential goods is a bad idea.  He deserves credit for  successes against ISIS in the Middle East, a possible success in disarming North Korea, and strengthening and focusing on the parts of the armed forces necessary for the defense and security of the United States.  He is right in saying that European governments should provide most of the manpower, equipment, and money  for the defense of Europe, that the Iranian government is not to be trusted, that some of our wars  in the Middle East were mistakes, and that the UN is wrong about Israel and other things. 

It is not a bad record for these days. It is better than I would have guessed at the time of the election.  But then there are his demeanor and personal behavior. He can be hard to take. He comes across as a  rude, arrogant, thin-skinned, blustering jerk. He may be thoughtful in private, but he surely manages to hide it in public.   His “communication” with the American people via Twitter is about typical of what goes on elsewhere on that platform and thus, for a president,  a national embarrassment.  His lies and whoppers may not be more frequent or outrageous than those of other politicians, including his predecessor, but his style and delivery make them seem cruder and more obvious. His petty feuds with and threats to reporters and TV comedians are demeaning and grossly undignified for a man holding the office once occupied by George Washington.  All of this matters politically. If he does not change some of it, he may need the Democrats to nominate a really unacceptable candidate (which they may) in 2020 to be reelected. He could even be in the same position as Lyndon Johnson was in 1968 and have to decide not to run for reelection.  People, especially the so-called swing voters, like to vote for someone they see as likable.  Trump needs to wise up fast. He lucked out in 2016 in having an opponent less likable than he was. He cannot count of that next time.