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The ordinary presidency of the extraordinary Donald J Trump, Presidential Impact and Future Consequences|AIWA! NO!|
“Today, I stand before the United Nations General Assembly to share the extraordinary progress we’ve made. In less than two years, my administra-tion has accomplished more than almost any administration in the his-tory of our country…. So true.” Donald J. Trump address at 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly Annual General Debate in New York City, September 25, 2018.
Donald J. Trump has a very high opinion of himself and elicits the most extreme opinions in others. Almost no one is coolly objective on the man or his presidency. Some regard him as a disruptor and outsider who has challenged the cozy status quo of entrenched special interests and a corrupt political system that served the elites not the masses.
In this view, he speaks truth to power on behalf of the millions of for-gotten, downtrodden and economically insecure Americans whose jobs disappeared or are being threatened by a globalized marketplace in goods, services and the means of production.
Trump has also rallies these “left-behinds” in the face of an alleged immigrant tide that is submerging traditional American values and culture, proliferating crime and threatening national security. He has, his cheerleaders argue broken the mold of American politics by constructing a new winning election coalition of God-fearing, culturally conservative, white work-ing-class voters and by remaking the Republican Party in his image.
The rock-solid backing of party supporters, and especially its activists, instils fear, respect and discipline in the Republican congressional caucus, which has been harnessed to achieve a string of ground-breaking pol-icy triumphs on the economy, tax cuts, deregulation, immigration, secu-rity and more. His challenge to the established order extends beyond America’s shores and includes his attacks on globalist international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO and the International Criminal Court as well as hated multinational environmental and trade agreements including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. According to his admirers, he has succeeded in his pledge to Make America Great Again at home and abroad.To Trump’s supporters, his outsiderness, populism, nationalism, America First patriotism and rebellious disruption are celebrated in themselves and held up as reasons for his many extraordinary accom-plishments. To his detractors, however, these characteristics are precisely what they fear.
They see a deeply flawed character wholly unsuited to the job of president—mendacious, narcissistic, quickly bored and distracted, misogynistic and ethnocentric, thin skinned and easily provoked, stunningly ill-informed yet utterly convinced of his own bril-liance and intelligence. Tey believe he is incapable of remedying his ignorance in part because he does not recognize it and further because he cannot assimilate new information into his long-fixed worldview. His character flaws interact with his politics in most unappealing ways:
An unapologetic racist playing on the base fears of vulnerable citizens, offering simplistic yet dangerous solutions to inordinately complex pub-lic policy problems; a bombastic, undiplomatic ignoramus lumbering across the world-stage upending decades-old and even centuries-old alli-ances and the international organizations that America built and which have sustained its dominance, all while cozying up to dictators and demagogues and affronting supposed friends and allies.
Perhaps even worse, according to critics, is Trump’s complete dis-dain for democratic institutions, structures and processes. At stake, they argue, is nothing less than America’s constitutional democracy itself.
©J.Herbert et al.
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