It was nice of E.J. Dionne to valiantly try to find some silver linings in the election of Donald Trump. I wouldn’t have bothered.
It got me thinking, though.
We haven’t had a president in Trump’s position since John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960. That’s the last time we had a president leave office after two terms who was unambiguously popular but nonetheless replaced by someone from the opposing party.
There are other similarities, too. Eisenhower enjoyed a Republican Congress in his first two years but thereafter had to negotiate with the Democrats. This is a mirror image of Obama’s experience. Like Kennedy, Trump will be taking over with the benefit of congressional majorities.
In truth, I don’t see many commonalities between JFK and Trump, but Eisenhower and Obama strike me as birds of a feather. In both cases, I think E.J Dione is right to evoke Joni Mitchell’s lyric that we don’t know what we have until it’s gone.
The presidency has chewed up most of our postwar presidents, and it’s impossible to envision any besides Obama serving a third term with credibility and support. By 1988, Reagan was staggering to the finish line, and the country was exhausted by Clinton and his scandals. George W. Bush might as well have carpet-bombed our country on the way out the door.
I do see some shadows from 2000, with the winner this time having lost the popular vote and lacking legitimacy in the eyes of many, and one party taking over completely for another. But there’s a big difference between seeing Clinton go and seeing Obama go.
Democrats fiercely defended Clinton against impeachment, but most of them resented it and we’re ready for Al Gore to replace him. In other words, we have to go back to Ike to find a situation where so many people are unenthusiastic about the current occupant of the White House having to leave.
Of course, there was a real charisma and excitement about Kennedy and his family. It was certainly different in kind from the charisma of Trump and his family, and the admirers are from different planets. The biggest difference between Trump and JFK is that Trump is not being embraced by the Washington Establishment.
But don’t forget that the Bay of Pigs was a plan hatched under Eisenhower that a young president didn’t have the self-confidence to cancel. It matters when someone lacking status and experience has to replace someone who is accomplished and popular.
Lastly, JFK walked into some some really stressed fault lines along race and the Cold War that created really intense opposition within his government and throughout the country. Aside from immigration policy, it seems to me that Trump is largely going to create the fault lines that bring him down.
from atrios.
Not gonna summarize/excerpt cuz, though long by atrios’ usual standards*, it’s still short by average blog standards, and it’s true, you should just go read the whole little thing.
*atrios’ spare, usually snarky minimalism, saying just enough to make the point while just linking to the stimulus/context in case the reader wants to pursue it further, is his genius. IMHO, obviously.
loses (taking Sears and lots of Sears’ employees jobs down the toilet with it). [atrios again: he’s on a roll this a.m.]
Been reading about Lampert’s reign of failure at Sears for a while. Darkly amusing, it is.
Randian philosophy cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Aside from immigration policy, it seems to me that Trump is largely going to create the fault lines that bring him down.
Bring him down, how? All the major outlets yesterday gave Trump for the 500 Sprint jobs thing that was already announced months ago. How much does the Washington establishment really hate Trump? I don’t think they hate him as much as you think they do. Congress won’t do squat because the GOP certainly isn’t going to impeach a GOP president, and in the extremely unlikely event that the Democrats somehow gets control of the House and 2/3’s of the Senate they don’t have the courage to impeachment a GOP president and deal with the backlash.
“How Trump and JFK are Alike”
Both are dead from the neck up?
Harder riddles, plz.
John Kennedy was a compassionate, caring human being–as were his brothers. Trump is a horrible, horrible human being–if he is human at all.
Forgot to add that the Kennedys were also very eloquent speakers (funny,too) with no talking points, which Trump will never be using his fourth grade and bully vocabulary.
Very little in common, except perhaps in a few areas potentially. Both JFK and Trump were left by their predecessors deteriorating relations with Russia. The cancelled summit in 1960 over the U-2 incident nixed hopes for a thawing in the Cold War as Ike exited. Ike also missed a golden opportunity to begin to repair things when he failed to reach out to the new leadership after Stalin died in 1953.
And the Obama admin seems to want to blame Russia for every evil action in the world, often using flimsy, suspect, nonexistent or as yet undisclosed evidence. For whatever reason, Obama has left US-Russia relations in worse shape than what existed at the end of 1960, the depths of CW1. Now this latest over the alleged DNC hacking by the Kremlin and the new sanctions.
The world will be a far better, safer place if Trump follows through with his public statements and begins to treat Russia as a partner rather than adversary or enemy. We’ll see. But Russia/Putin is one area where his comments have been consistent and consistently good. I would applaud him if he moved for a detente.
I’ve also read recently that Donald will be looking at the inaugurals of JFK and Reagan for inspiration. He’s not the great public speaker either of them were, and is unlikely to come close to giving a memorable speech as Kennedy did, but it will be interesting to see which passages he draws from.
Bill Gates compares Trump to JFK
Holly innovation…
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