In the video above, I discuss how Trump is the opposite of what the Founders assumed a president would be, and how his stupidity is causing his presidency and the entire Republican Party to fail. Please give it a watch as a companion piece to this article.
To those who observed Trump’s first term, it was obvious that his second term was destined to fail before it started. Successful presidencies are often built before the president-elect ever takes office, during the presidential transition through staffing.
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Trump took the wrong lesson from his first term. Trump thought that he couldn’t do what he wanted because the people around him told him no, so he replaced competent people with loyalists who would carry out his wishes.
By staffing his administration in this manner, he set himself up for failure, and ran counter to what the founders intended the presidency to be.
The US system of governance was based on the idea that presidents would be people of virtue. There was a belief among the founders that the American people would not choose a president who lacked character and virtue.
The role model for the presidency, according to the Constitution Convention delegate Pierce Butler, was George Washington.
Butlersaid that the delegates, “cast their eyes towards General Washington [the Convention’s presiding officer] as President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given to a President, by their opinions of his Virtue.”
The Constitution has been able to endure since 1787 because it is not a completely specific document. The Constitution has served as a guiding document, with relatively few but some very important amendments in the nation’s history.
Those who wrote the Constitution created a strong executive because they believed future executives would be like Washington. The assumption that presidents would follow Washington’s example and behave like high-character individuals who respected the office and public service meant that the presidency was often governed by norms and precedents, not laws and rules.
Presidents are supposed to be honorable public servants, and the system worked really well, with a few exceptions, until the American people twice elected a person who is the opposite of George Washington to serve as president.
Not only has Donald Trump been found in a court of law to have engaged in fraud, but corruption appears to be the currency of his administration. Trump ignores rules, norms, and ethics like they don’t exist.
Trump did get elected president twice, and that doesn’t happen by accident. Trump has strengths. Because he isn’t a thinker, Trump makes solutions to complicated problems seem simple, which can be appealing to some voters. The problem is that once he is on office and he can’t solve the problems, voters turn on him.
Trump’s lack of respect for norms, laws, and his generally immoral behavior means that he has no qualms about using bullying, intimidation, and being dishonest. Again, these are all traits that can help win an election or two, but they become liabilities when it comes to governing.
Because of his character traits and his effort to overturn the 2020 election, many Americans feared that his return to the presidency would mean the end of democracy and dictatorship, but Trump has one giant limiting factor that explains why his presidency has already been deemed a failure by the American people.
It would be foolish to dismiss Trump solely because of his apparent lack of intellect, but Trump’s refusal to learn is his Achilles heel and why he is failing.
Trump contains a self-destructive combination of arrogance and stupidity that is sinking his presidency.
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