Squandered Chances

Trump COULD Have Been a Good President, But He Squandered Great Opportunities

Trump is a bad President.

In fact, he’s colossally awful.

Probably the worst, or at a minimum, in the conversation.

The real tragic thing of it all is that it DIDN’T have to be this way. I realize I am going to anger a lot of people out there with me saying this, but he could have actually been a halfway decent President if his moral compass wasn’t so fouled up. He came into office, both times, on the heels of a President who took us out of catastrophe and turned the economy and the nation’s outlooks around. Practically gift wrapped for the incoming Trump an ideal situation both times.

• When Obama left office, we were coming out of the Great Recession begun under President W. Bush, we were the strongest economy in the world, our standing after the disastrous Iraq War was returning, and public sentiment was feeling positive for the first time really in a long time. People felt we were on the right course.

• When Biden left office, he had managed to get us through COVID, opened up the country, and worked to address the anticipated inflation caused by the unraveling of the supply chains. Economically, people still felt the pinch but inflation was decreasing, the world was opening, the economy was picking up and things were pointed in the right direction.

Trump could have coasted. Not done a thing or just pushed a little marginally at the edges and would have been fine. And he was actually even granted a certain level of goodwill when he came in for the first term, with Americans taking a “wait and see” approach to how things would go. And in the second term, he actually had a positive approval over 50% when he was inaugurated. Sure, he had said some outlandish things on the campaign trail, but he wasn’t really serious about all those….right?

And on the first day he began to blow shit up.

I won’t revisit every stupid thing Trump has done in the four years of his first term and the roughly 16 months of his second, but it takes a special kind of stupid to ruin things when doing nothing would have resulted in far better results. I mean, Trump didn’t just make bad decisions, he relished in doing them, courted the worst people in the world, put in place probably the most ridiculous cabinet ever and continues to make mistake after mistake, unforced error after error. He could have played golf for his entire 2nd term so far and done nothing, and the nation would be in a better place than it is now.

Looking at the Comparative Legacy

There are four areas Presidents are generally assessed by the public and by history; 1) the economy, 2) foreign affairs, 3) the cultural era, and 4) personality factors.

The Economy

On the economy, when Trump came into office in 2017, the economy was clicking like gangbusters. The deficit, while still around, had been reduced by Obama and a hostile Congress through a series of shutdowns and negotiations. America was the envy of the world as it had come out of the Great Recession on the strongest footing.

Then Trump jacks up the debt into the stratosphere with ruinous tax cuts that jack the deficit up into the trillions annually. Years of ZIRP following the housing collapse hollowed out oppurtunities to maneuver should anything bad happen. And of course it did when COVID hit. Trump’s answer was to print more money, which jacked up the debt even further.

When Trump came in the second time, he was prepared—to take a bloody axe to the whole global economy. He raised tarriffs on everyone. He turned government and the rule of law into a cult of personality and economically it didn’t matter what the law said, it only mattered if you had “Washington on your side.” Mergers were nixed out of vendettas, lawsuits brandished against corporations for what people said and if you didn’t like what the Don did, he’d raise tarriffs even more.

People look at how he’s handled the Strait of Hormuz (more on this later) and gas prices as a shock to the system; I see it has the natural consequence of policies and a personality that only looks at his own bottom line, and not the nation’s.

Foreign Affairs

He’s made a mockery of the entire global system that had the US at the top of the world hegemon since WWII. He thinks that being POTUS gives him authority as if he were King of the World, when in reality the US’s power only comes from the fact that we have worked hard to be in the right, helping and aiding so many countries when they needed it the most. What does Trump do? He eliminates USAID. He befriends dictators like Kim Jong Un and Putin. Sides with Putin in the war with Ukraine, who is fighting for freedom and their survival (which would be something we would have eagerly supported in the past). He tears up the Iran Nuclear Deal, then bombs Iran, then kills off its entire leadership, then repeatedly threatens it again. He dares to withdraw from the UN and NATO, two institutions that work to the benefit of the country. He levels trade tarriffs to countries he doesn’t like. He lets in refuggees asking for asylum only from…South Africa, claiming they are victims of a “white genocide.” He threatens to invade an ally over GREENLAND? I could go on and on, but you get the point.

The world is a much unsafer place with Trump at the helm than anyone else. He could have just shook hands and nodded and gone along to get along like every other US President. “Politics ends at the water’s edge” was the old line, about how foreign affairs is largely the same regardless of party. Trump—nah, he’s all about blowing up everything in the world if he could. Raze Gaza to the ground for a Trump Tower-Israel.

Culturally

Presidents usually get a lot of credit on the culture of their times. It’s not out of anything they do personally, it’s just people tend to look fondly at Presidents of an era in which things were going pretty well in the country. Take Obama for instance—supported DOMA, opposed gay marriage, didn’t really do much to push the issue. Obergfell is decided by the Supreme Court and he lights up the White House in rainbow colors, and is now looked back on as an LGBTQIA+ champion. See what I mean?

There can be no doubt that everyone recognizes the culture as being much coarser under Trump than other Presidents. People are ruder to one another, political violence is rising, there’s this resentment and anger endemic in the culture that people across the spectrum don’t like. Everything is a protest. Everything is amped up to 11. Nobody feels comfortable or that life is going well. Confidence is at all time lows. For crying out loud, he shot tear gas at protesters for the sake of a photo op.

And then there was COVID. People remember that from his first term and how that changed culture in America. Trump had the benefit of losing office a year into the pandemic, and not the aftermath. In 2024, when people looked back at Trump 1.0, they didn’t blame him (they shouldn’t, there wasn’t much he could have done) but they held it against Biden (they shouldn’t have, he was fixing the problem). In Trump 2.0, there’s just a cultural malaise over the country now; like we don’t anticipate good things ahead.

Personally

Trump is the least modest person in memory, and shows no virtue for humility. He’s a creatue of vice, a pantheon to hubris, and treats the entire United States Government as his own. He genuinely thinks he can do whatever he wants, and with a passive Congress not pushing back, he largely has and can. His north star is his own greed and narcissism. When you look at every bad decision he has made (and he’s made a ton), this is at the core of all of them. When you compare them to other Presidents, he’s in a depth all to his own.

How he presents himself, as this incredibly petty, spiteful, hollow shell of a human being is a low most find abhorrent. He holds no respect for the office, for his fellow Americans, for those who held the office, for those who work in goverment, or for others facing problems around the world. In fact, he spends so much time and effort belittling everyone, for the smallest of reasons.

His administration is a clown car. Remember when he first ran for office and people cracked wise that Gary Busey, Omarossa, and Meatloaf would all be cabinet secretaries? Yeah, if only! Gene Simmons and Donny Deutsch would make better cabinet members than half of the bootlickers in there now. With Trump, its not about what gets done and whether it is better for America, it’s who is on his side and what’s better for Trump.

What Could Have Been

Now, I want you to imagine a different presidency. He comes into office in 2017 and rather than tearing up everything, he maintains a relative status quo. He still builds the wall and revamps immigration to the extent he does, but instead of the cruelty he so ruthlessly deploys, he maintains the responsible and legal standards of his predecessors. It’s a presidency where he doesn’t need to cravenly attack Clinton or Biden or Harris with pettiness, nor give juvenile nicknames to those he doesn’t like. At Charlottesville, he calls out neo-Nazis for what they are and discredits them as shameful. He doesn’t increase the debt exponentially, and instead, keeps the growing economy on track and even makes changes on the margins some more, cutting the deficit and maybe even having a surplus by the time COVID hits. When COVID does hit, he supports Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and others working to solve the crisis and is lauded for Operation Warp Speed (instead of hiding from it like he does now). He never tears up the Iran nuclear deal and Iran is in a much better position for long term reform. He puts on brakes to Netanyahu’s leveling of Gaza, and works to bring the international community together for refugee and redevelopment relief. He supports Ukraine from the start and Russia relents and eases back recognizing it as a lost cause. While his administration isn’t staffed with the “best of the best,” it’s par for the course, including many rational, intelligent and pragmatic individuals who work to ensure government works as it should. When George Floyd was killed, he commented respectfully about it, calmed the nation at a time of grief, and diffused many protests that otherwise devolved into violence. He didn’t tweet, or post to his own social media all the time. When he spoke publicly, he talked reverentially and intelligently. His demeanor was normal, his reputation was average. Most importantly, if or when he lost that first term, he accepted the loss, didn’t hold a rally to “Stop the steal” and incite an insurrection that brought our nation to shame.

You know, like what most every other person in his position as the head of a country typically would do.

Can you see that President? Doing the bare minimum of what we expect of a President and reflecting a shared sense of common decency? Can you imagine what life would be like today, with that as our nation’s leader? How the world would feel utterly different? Would we look back on that person as being a modestly good president?

I don’t know if I would rename the Kennedy Center, put his face on a passport or put his likeness on a gold coin. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t build a grand monument to a President in these times. But would I feel a little OK about the country, our President and our world? Probably. I’d even feel a little optimistic for the future.

And that is the cost of squandered opportunities.

That is what makes him a bad President.