Donald Trump 2020

Please join me in a brief trip back in time to 2016. The two dominant candidates for President were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. At the time, I considered Donald Trump to be ineligible as a matter of character and experience for my vote for that high office. He had no useful government experience and his character...well it wasn't good.

The same was true about Hillary Clinton; her record in public office is abysmal and her character...again, not good.

So I voted for a candidate that did have a record of success in office and was of good character; Gary Johnson. I still think America would be a better place in 2020 if he had been elected.

Jumping back to a few days before election day, what do we have.

Donald Trump, whose character remains...not good. Anyone who read his book "The Art of The Deal" would instantly recognize the egotism that has been at the center of the Presidency for almost four years. He believed then and he believes today that if he thinks something is a good idea, then everyone should believe it is a good idea. He governs from his gut. We have been fortunate in that his gut is occasionally aligned with the interests of the American people.

While his character hasn't changed, his experience in office has certainly changed. While we cast our votes for the candidate, in reality, we are voting for the team that will form their administration. And the Trump administration has been reasonably successful at producing policies that are in the interests of the American people.

The following is in no particular order and some of these items may well overlap.

The Good

• NATO - NATO lived for decades under the American defensive umbrella. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO countries began to skimp on their commitment to the alliance. Mr. Obama complained about the same issue. Mr. Trump did something productive to get the individual nations to increase their defense spending. He also re-aligned our deployment posture in Europe to better contain Russia.
• Iran - Mr. Trump got us out of that disastrous "deal" that allowed Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability and re-instituted sanctions that will hopefully undermine the theocrats and give the Iranian people a shot at having a civilized government. He also put the Iranian regime on notice that targeting our troops in Iraq was unacceptable behavior by targeting General Sulemani.
• ISIS/ISIL - After the US struggled for 8 years of feckless leadership under Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump made the moves necessary to put down ISIS in about 6 months.
• Israel - Given that the various terrorist (or terrorist adjacent) organizations that run the PA, it was time for the region to move on. The administration has brokered a series of peace deals that will hopefully foster long-lasting peace in the region. If Mr. Trump were a Democrat, the Nobel committee would be grasping for ways to award him multiple Peace Prizes in one year.
• Taxes - He led the effort to cut middle-class taxes. He cut corporate taxes making America a competitive option for corporations which in turn means more American jobs. He capped SALT deductions for the rich.
• Constitution and Laws - Oddly enough Mr. Trump has moved the government back towards operating under a Constitutional constraint. He is enforcing laws passed by Congress and he is undoing anti-Constitutional directives from past Presidents. For the last ~20 years, American law has expected that our embassy in Israel would be located in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. Mr. Trump made it happen. For the last ~30 years, American law has expected the government to collect those who enter/stay in our country [illegally] and send them home. There is no allowance for Presidential whims. The Trump administration enforced the law as written and passed. He even supported a change in our immigration policies by suggesting that Congress do its job and pass a new immigration law. We do not need any more Presidential "pen and phone" activities. We need Congress to assert its rightful place by passing detailed laws which are then enforced by the administration.
• Supreme Court - I'm frankly tickled pink by two of his three successful nominations to the Supreme Court. Neal Gorsuch has a demonstrable small "l" libertarian streak. I think Justice Kavanaugh has a similar temperament. It's too early to know about Justice Coney-Barrett, but it looks like she will be a third Trump appointee that is solidly in support of the Constitution as written and amended. It is a document that was written to constrain government power with an expansive view towards the liberty of the individual. Coupled with Justice Thomas, we might finally have a court that will take a stand against the modern administrative state and force Congress to do its job, legislate, and restrain any administration from using Presidential edicts as a means of creating new laws out of whole cloth. For those that don't want a "strong man" style President to run free in the country, a Supreme Court populated with originalists is your best defense.
• Regulations - Mr. Trump established that any agency seeking to create a new regulation had to identify two old regulations to be eliminated. The net result is that business activity increased in this modestly reduced regulatory environment.
• The Economy - Prior to Covid, the economy was running great. The Obama administration told us that 6% unemployment and 1-2% annual GDP growth was as good as it was going to get for the foreseeable future. Due in part to the administration's tax and regulatory policies, unemployment ended up close to 3.5% with the lowest black and hispanic unemployment since those statistics were first measured. GDP growth was over 2%. And, most importantly, the income of the bottom quintile started going up faster than that of the upper quintile. That hasn't happened in decades.
• Veterans - Under the prior administration, the Veterans Administration was killing veterans via neglect. Bonuses were being paid based on budget compliance rather than on how effectively veterans' health issues were being resolved. The VA is currently far better. Further improvements can and should be made. It is also obvious that the current administration is focused on serving veterans rather than considering them to be a budgetary liability.
• The Media - While not an unvarnished success, he...or more correctly his various spokespersons...have had a pretty good record of pointing out the inconsistencies in the reporting by most of the major media organizations. In particular, Kayleigh McEnany and her binder of past news stories have been a godsend. The media is, on average, far to the left of the average American. They stopped with any pretense of reporting news in a non-partisan manner decades ago. Someone needs to point that out. As a big plus, while Mr. Trump has been verbally abusive towards the press, he has never sent federal agents to investigate reporters as was more common in the Mr. Obama's administration.

The Meh

• Iraq/Syria/Afghanistan - Let's be honest, those countries are a geopolitical mess. I can't say that Mr. Trump made any substantive progress, but he hasn't taken those nations backward. Those nations are independent actors and there are simply times when even the President of the United States is unable to move things in a positive direction. That is particularly true when other actors (i.e. Iran, Turkey, and Russia) are seeking to influence things in a different direction.
• North Korea - Mr. Trump's hot and cold diplomacy ran from brinkmanship to near fawning of Kim Jong Il. The result did little to change North Korea's relationship with the rest of the world. He tried. Every President tries. He fared no better and no worse than the rest.
• Trade - This is a bit of a mix. On the one hand, he did get some modest concessions from Mexico and Canada in the USMCA deal. And his use of tariffs has somewhat moderated China's behavior. Those aren't big successes, but they are successes. On the flip side, the tariffs have taken more out of American pockets due to increases in the cost of imports. The trade deficit hasn't changed and may have gotten slightly worse. I'll give him credit for trying to correct the severe imbalance in our trade relationships around the world. Past administrations did a poor job of negotiating those deals. Mr. Trump simply wasn't able to do accomplish anymore.
• Border/Immigration - This has been a bit of a mixed bag. Illegal immigration has slowed somewhat. The child separation process was conducted in a ham-handed manner. Separating children to ensure that they are not being trafficked is a sound objective. Failing to adequately document who those children were with so they could be returned to their legitimate parents once the parents were sent home was a failure. Simply failing to document the disposition of their cases in a transparent manner was a public relations failure.

The Bad

• Corona Virus - While a bit of a mixed bag, there is just far too much negative for this to go in the Meh bag. Mr. Trump has done some things well. Shutting down immigration from China early on was a sound and productive step. His task force focused on getting ventilator production up to speed. He had the military supplement overwhelmed hospitals for the 1-2 month period where such support was critical. His administration has moved several solutions for a vaccine quickly down the development process so that we might all put this contagion behind us. But...
  • he remains focused on the economy to the detriment of all other concerns. Having a job is great. Being alive to work that job is a bit more important.
  • In the early days of the virus, the CDC and FDA insisted on running their standard playbook rather than using the proven testing regimes from Europe or South Korea. In that crucial period where we fell far behind in testing, we needed more Trump, and we go got less.
  • In the early days, we were told that masks were not effective. That was a lie told to prevent people from buying up all of the masks (N95 and otherwise) that were going to be sorely needed in various healthcare settings. He should have made those FDA and CDC bureaucrats tell the truth; masks work to varying degrees but are most needed elsewhere. He could have made it patriotic to wear a less effective homemade mask, but he didn't.
  • There is probably a whole other essay in the wings about the effectiveness of various masks. What isn't in question is that N95 masks work. While the government accelerated the production of ventilators and vaccines, I've seen no real effort to increase the American production of N95 masks. They should be so plentiful that they should have been sold at every street corner convenience store at half the pre-Covid price. There should be official government videos playing to demonstrate how they are effectively fitted to individual users. Government notices to "cover the nose AND mouth" should routinely be a part of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, etc. advertising.
  The sad truth is that Mr. Trump missed so many opportunities to easily improve the Covid problem. And he missed all of them.
• Character - Donald Trump lacks character. His history of womanizing (to say the least) and serial infidelities marks him as a person who can (and probably will) turn on anyone who trusts him.
  
  His business acumen is correctly described as patchwork at best. He borrows large sums for his businesses, takes a hefty cut for himself, and then leaves the investors holding the bag when the company goes into bankruptcy. Again, and again, and again.
  
  While many criticize Mr. Trump for his crude and boorish statements/tweets, I think the larger problem is his utter lack of strategy. A President can be crude from time to time, but it should be done with an eye towards a larger purpose. As an example, sticking his rhetorical thumb in the eye of the media is sorely needed from time to time. Labeling every news piece that describes him or his administration critically as "fake news" devalues the meaning of words like "fact" and "truth". Donald Trump is pointlessly crude and someone needs to [take away his Twitter account.]
  
  His random positions and odd statements made it so that men of high character could not serve in the administration in good conscience. If people like Jim Mattis and John Kelly couldn't be convinced to stay, then there is a serious problem in the Whitehouse.

This Was Avoidable

We didn't have to be in the current situation. Jim Webb ran for the Presidency in 2016. Rather than supporting a true moderate with sound character and a successful record in public office, the Democrats went for Hillary Clinton. In 2016, I would have gladly considered voting for Jim Webb instead of Gary Johnson.

Rather than come back to the middle in 2020 and run a true American unity ticket, the Democrats ran a slate of leftists. Joe Biden has never been a centrist. He has always been in the center of the Democrat party. Given that the Democrat party has been infiltrated by people that share more ideology with the World Workers Party than anyone else, the leftward drift of the Democrats has pulled old Joe leftward. Their influence is reflected in their party platform which is about as far left as that party has ever been in my lifetime.

Joe Biden, personally, is suspect. If the phrase "appearance of impropriety" is to have any useful meaning, then the revelations about his and Hunter's activities should be sufficient to have excluded him from consideration by the Democrats. Add to that the obvious signs that Mr. Biden is beginning to show some signs of his age. Add to that his counterproductive record as a legislator. Joe Biden was ineligible for my vote in 1988 because he was a typical gaffe-prone legislator. Now he is much older and certainly not nearly as sharp.

Kamala Harris is another politician that has just been wrong on the issues for far too long. As a prosecutor, she put tens of thousands of minorities behind bars for marijuana possession. Now she laughs off marijuana as a non-issue without bothering to apologize for her past actions. Her office withheld exculpatory evidence in a serious felony case. And she willingly participated in the calculated smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh.

There were far too many other options on the table. While I might not have voted for any of these, I probably would have followed up on 2016 with a 2020 vote for the Libertarian candidate as a centrist Democrat would not have been demonstrably worse. Had Mr. Biden opted for a centrist as his VP, I could have voted for a third-party candidate as I doubt he will finish out his term in office.

Tulsi Gabbard was interesting; at the very least respectable. Deval Patrick has a history of working across the proverbial aisle. Andrew Yang brought a fresh perspective to the race. Even John Hickenlooper might have been able to pull off an interesting race for the Whitehouse. I would have considered voting for some of these candidates. At the very least I would have supported a third-party nominee as being closer to who I want in office without risking grave damage to our Republic.

I will be voting for a split ticket on Tuesday. There are a few Democrats running for local offices that I think can be trusted to execute the duties of those offices properly. There are a couple of Republicans that I simply cannot vote for based on their past actions.

And I will be voting for Donald Trump for President. Not because I think he is a stellar candidate. Not because he is fitting to stand amongst leaders like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Reagan, Coolidge, Lincoln, Kennedy, and Truman.

However, letting the modern Democrats have any more power in the federal government is not a responsible option for the preservation of the Republic. This is strictly a defensive vote based on avoiding policies that would be more harmful to our country than Donald Trump's demonstrably deficient character.

Let them toss the socialists back into the World Workers Party, abandon their modern identitarian focus, re-tool their policies so that they serve all Americans, and talk to me again in 4 years.

[Modest edits 12/18/2020] [and on 5/20/2021] [and 10/2/2023]