It’s going to be a wild ride --
My fear is that even if we run Trump off, there will be no return to “the good old days.” In the first 100 days of Trump’s second go at running things, he has already brought shambles to the entire structure of our historical form of government – inside and out, and top to bottom.
The second election of Trump, the constant stream of changes he is instilling upon us, and his astonishing view and methods he is promising for the future may well mark the demise of our grand experiment. There are many who are convinced that our former style of government will never return. Consider:
We were taught from grade school that our system of government was the best in the world. What began as a clear experiment in government has worked for over 250 years, surviving the iron fist of King George III, and enduring the curious entreaties of the rest of Europe swirling around us during the early years, prevailing in a civil war and rebuilding the country with a strong measure of success in the middle years, and withstanding two world wars to g row to a position of unrivaled prosperity in the latest years.
In patting ourselves on the back over the successes we have achieved, we must remember that for most of our history we enjoyed huge economic growth from developing the vast lands of the new world. In more recent times, with no new lands to develop and the rest of the world watching our every move, we seem to be facing continual failures in our attempts to export our version of democracy to other parts of the world.
Now, with the sudden onset of change dramatically sweeping our own national government, coupled with a growing awareness of potential weaknesses that already exists in our model for government, the potential for international failure is suddenly and dramatically a real possibility. While what Trump is proposing might be considered horrible by many, what he is and has been tearing down to get there may no longer be viable if we ever regain the opportunity to return. We may find that many attempts to return to “the old way of doing things” will prove to be impossible.
Trump’s lies have become so common they have been given a special term -- “alternative facts” cloned by one of his political operatives in an earlier campaign. For reasons completely concealed clear to the present time, Trump’s mendacity has not been considered a disqualifying trait of fundamental proportions. What will become of this sudden change in political attitudes when the same traits are found in future candidates remains to be seen.
Marital fidelity in Presidential candidates has had a spotted reputation. Roosevelt openly kept a mistress and was reportedly in her company when he died. The press largely ignored the illicit relations, apparently conceding that marital infidelity had nothing to do with competence in running the country in times of war. When Bill Clinton’s episode with a staffer came to light, Republicans came close to bringing him down; although he managed to survive, his entire second term was largely marked by the ongoing Congressional investigations into his alleged marital affairs. In other times a single misstatement upon this subject by a candidate has led to the candidate's immediate undoing – witness the rapid decline of the candidacy of John Edwards when the claim of his marital fidelity was unwound. And does anyone even remember Eliot Spitzer, the up-and-coming New Yorker who disappeared completely in a single weekend once he acknowledged his preference for high priced hookers.
Given these spotty examples, the nonchalant reaction to Trump’s casual attitude towards the truth and towards his misadventures in the arena of sexual misconduct is still astounding. Three marriages, multiple assignations, relations with hookers, and to top it all, hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by Trump to the various paramours – whether professional, amateur or accidental -- to keep the true nature of these adventures silent. And when anything does surface, Trump makes no attempt to explain or excuse. If anything, he brags.
Trump refused to concede Biden’s victory in 2020 when he was defeated after his first term in office -- the first Presidential candidate in history to fail to do so. The Presidential concession had been an act that over history has marked the peaceful transition of power, a tradition unique to the U.S. way.
Instead, for the first time in history, the transition of power from one party to another was marked by extreme violence. Following Trump's defeat in the election, and on the day Biden’s name was to be certified by Congress as the incoming President, a riot erupted in the nation’s capitol, swarming through the Capitol Building and causing millions of dollars in property damage, numerous injuries and several deaths.
Elections in the United States have never fostered riots of this magnitude. It remains to be seen if the nation can ever return to the traditional and peaceful ceremonial events demonstrated in history as stemming from the transition of power from one party to the other without any display of violence.
In January of 2024, over 1500 individuals were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for various federal crimes in connection with the Capitol riots. Despite repeated promises by Trump that he would not do so, on the day he was sworn into office, Trump pardoned every individual who had been charged or convicted of any to you crime on the day of the Capitol uprising.. His pardon included over 700 individuals convicted of serios personal crimes including physical assaults, batteries, violent conspiracies and other related criminal activities. The crimes were felonies, and carried sentences in some cases of many years in prison.
In my memory of over twenty Presidential elections, giving us fifteen Presidents and dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth election in 1944, Trump is the first one who refused to concede a losing election to his opponent, the first one to not attend the inauguration of his opponent, the first one to refuse to separate himself from his personal fortune while in office by means of a blind trust or other mechanism, the first one to fail to disclose his private earnings while in office, the first one to refuse to reveal his income tax returns on prior earnings for a reasonable period before his election, and the first one to put members from his entire family on the public payroll in one form or another, since his election.
Previously, Presidents have declined personal gifts from foreign dignitaries and have immediately turned over to the government all official gifts received. Trump appears to expect large personal gifts in exchange for dinner invitations and has announced that a mid-east oil nation is donating a Boeing passenger jet to him, worth upwards of $300 million or more, which he has indicated he intends fly as Air Force One while in office and then take with him as his personal aircraft when he leaves office.
Past presidents have sought out individuals with knowledge and experience for high level agency appointments. Appointees often included presidents of major businesses, college professors, governors of states, and Congressmen and Senators, all with demonstrated expertise in the agency’s field. Trump’s sole criterium appears to be loyalty to him, with actual experience or expertise in the appointee’s job being unnecessary. In a curious program invented by Trump, Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur designated to head an ad hoc agency with the mission of reducing government, promised to cut billions from the federal budget. Then he reduced his goal to several hundred million. Then he reduced it again to less than a few million. Then he abandoned the agency Trump created for him and left the government. Now Trump and Musk are in a word battle as both men trade insults over the various media sights.
After months of creating complete havoc within a substantial number of agencies, many of the wholesale budget cuts have been substantially restored and the personnel actions are being abated or rescinded. The cuts and personnel changes that are still outstanding are in the subjects of over 150 federal lawsuits with restraining orders entered in most to preserve the status quo while the litigation proceeds.
I have only scratched the surface with a few of the obvious management changes Trump has engineered coupled to a brief, general look at what is occurring in the nation’s capital while we sleep. The uncertainty this is causing in the business community can be seen in the wild swings in the stock and bond markets, as investors react to the dizzy changes coming out of Trump’s administration. It is not likely to end soon. The Congressional elections might alleviate some of the problem if the Congress swings Democratic. But if Congress remains in Republican hands, things will get worse, not better.
What then? A return to normalcy within either the Republican or Democratic party will see a successor to office with the monumental task of having to rebuild close to every governmental agency from the ground up.
The wild ride is just beginning. There is no let-up in sight.