Donald Trump has been a disaster for conservatives, for Republicans, and for the country. Even if his replacement is far from ideal, the United States will benefit from Trump’s exit from the White House.
Trump has been a disaster politically. He has been problematic on policy. And he has been worse than disastrous for the culture.
Politically, Trump is a big loser. At the beginning of 2015, Republicans had majorities in both the House and the Senate. The House majority was protected by favorable gerrymandering. The Senate majority was bolstered by the fact that, in terms of population, it overrepresents rural states that trend conservative.
Meanwhile, the expected, and eventual, Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, was arguably the most emotionally unattractive major-party nominee in our lifetimes. Almost any decent Republican candidate with skilled campaign strategists could have rebuilt the Reagan coalition of blue-collar workers and suburban professionals in order to keep her from the Oval Office. Perhaps 11 or 12 of the 17 candidates for the Republican presidential nomination could have defeated her, a few of them rather easily.
Now, after a full cycle of House, Senate, and presidential elections, Republicans have lost all three. Sure, Trump energized white workers and slightly improved the GOP percentage of the nonwhite vote, but he turned off suburbanites and professionals in droves and hyperenergized millions and millions against him. The arithmetic was awful.
Consider black voters. Yes, Trump improved from 10% to 13% of the black vote between 2016 and 2020. But the raw number of black voters increased from shy of 14 million to more than 20 million. In very rough figures, that means the margin of Trump’s loss among blacks increased from about 11 million to about 15 million. That’s four million extra votes for Democrats — votes of people who weren’t accustomed to voting before now but who now have cast their lots, and their rooting interests, against Republicans.
Thus, Trump has not only cost Republicans all three elective parts of the federal government, but also has left them in big trouble for the future, with millions and millions of voters now disgusted with the GOP while Trump’s “working” base is demoralized and full of Trump’s lies that the rest of the party disdains them. Plus, young voters, who soon will become a plurality of the whole electorate, are now overwhelmingly Democratic (or, worse, “progressive”), with anti-Republican feelings far more virulent than they would have been if Trump hadn’t so terribly offended them.
For those who believe in limited government, in a strong defense, in traditional values, and in American exceptionalism, this is a potential electoral disaster going forward. And it’s almost all the fault of Trump, the ultimate loser.
Now we move to considerations of policy. Trump gets far too much credit for the policy “wins” for conservatives during his term in office and far too little blame for legislative failures and, worse, for terrible moves in the other direction.
First, consider the failures. Trump has a pathetic record of actually shepherding legislation through Congress. In fact, the only major piece of legislation conservatives can really celebrate during Trump’s term was the tax cut that Paul Ryan had spent years developing and lining up Republican support for. The minute any Republican president had Republican majorities in both branches of Congress, along with the chance to use the budget “reconciliation” process to avoid a filibuster, the tax cut would have passed. Trump had to do no heavy lifting, unless he considers an ink pen to be heavy.
Other than that, Trump struck out again and again in Congress, even when Republicans ran both chambers. The worst was when Trump fumbled the attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare. Doing so was never going to be easy, but it was definitely achievable. Trump repeatedly got in the way of his own “team” as the legislation was being crafted, then failed to rein in the right-wing Freedom Caucus when it torpedoed a version that was plenty good enough for that stage in the process, and then he himself further torpedoed the belatedly House-passed bill as “mean, mean, mean,” thus making Republican senators skittish that he wouldn’t have their backs as they tried to pass it in their chamber.
Overall, Trump’s legislative attempts were inept at best, ham-handed often, and utterly counterproductive at other times.
Meanwhile, apart from Ryan’s tax cuts, almost all of Trump’s achievements were via executive action that any Republican would have taken and that incoming President Biden can rather easily reverse. Of course, Trump’s team deregulated considerably and reinterpreted plenty of other regulations, but that’s because the Obama administration itself did so much policymaking via executive action that was available to undo. Again, if Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, or Rick Santorum had been president, each of them would have done the same. And the first two, especially, probably would have defeated Clinton more decisively in the first place, thus accruing more political capital to use for conservative ends.
Likewise, on judges, most of Trump’s Republican adversaries in 2016 would have moved just as aggressively to fill the courts as Trump did, as all would have enjoyed the same conservative legal infrastructure. Also, all would have benefited from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s focus on the task, aided by the new, anti-filibuster rules catalyzed by former Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s use of the “nuclear option” on nominations.
Trump’s other policy “achievements” were dubious. On trade with Mexico and Canada, he basically just rearranged the same furniture. His other trade initiatives quite arguably hurt the economy more than helped. He actually secured lower appropriations to build the “wall” on the Mexican border than Democrats themselves originally offered. And even in the triumph of the peace deals between Israel and several Arab/Muslim nations, Trump did far less than he claimed. Those nations and Israel had enjoyed de facto rapprochements for nearly a decade already, and all they really needed was an American administration to get out of the way.
Worse, Trump pushed policy horribly askew in other ways, especially in diplomacy. His loud bumbling with regard to North Korea and Venezuela badly hurt American prestige. He handed Russia a major foothold in Syria and repeatedly gave the evil Vladimir Putin verbal cover. He repeatedly antagonized allies and undermined the unity of NATO, and he has left our mission in Afghanistan a muddle.
Domestically, Trump oversaw by far the biggest-spending, largest debt-infused federal government in U.S. peacetime history, even before the pandemic arrived. Trump didn’t just get dragged into the spending maw; he eagerly led the way. This wasn’t a mere failure. It was a deliberate betrayal of the most basic, long-standing tenet of conservatism. Trump’s destruction of the ideal of limited government has done lasting damage to the conservative cause.
Then, of course, there was the grossly unethical behavior that twice earned — and I do mean “earned” — two separate impeachments for Trump, and plenty of other instances of less-than-impeachable misbehavior in both official and unofficial duties. This consistent betrayal of ethical standards, too, is an important matter of policy as it undermines both the constitutional order and people’s faith in the constitutional system.
All of which leads to the worst, most lasting effects that Trump will leave behind — namely his massive destructiveness to essentials of the American culture.
Trump has horrendously coarsened public discourse, immensely exacerbated the level of vitriol, used extraordinarily violent language as a matter of course, extravagantly and repeatedly labeled even his temporary adversaries “traitors,” “enemies of the people,” and “human scum,” paid off a pornography star and a nude model, spread vile conspiracy theories, and slandered opponents as virtual child molesters and assassination abettors. He has repeatedly made excuses for radical racists, used lies to undermine voters’ faith in their election system, abandoned the symbolically crucial in-person transfer of presidential power, and helped incite an assault on the U.S. Capitol that he then spent hours refusing to do anything substantive or verbal to stop.
And that’s just a partial list of a far, far longer record of debasements of important norms, standards, and basic human decency. Unlike William F. Buckley’s eviction of the John Birch Society’s leadership from the conservative movement, Trump has welcomed and encouraged the loony, malicious conspiracies of QAnon. Every single day, it seems, he has trashed those strains of conservatism and national culture identified as lodestars by Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Russell Kirk, and others. He has subverted the optimism and inclusiveness of Reagan-Kemp conservatism. And he has repeatedly dishonored heroes who embody American courage and character, while pardoning some of the worst denizens imaginable of the national political swamp.
In sum, Trump has been the worst human being to occupy the Oval Office in our lifetimes and a major detriment to American society and world harmony. His presence in power was a blight, and his leaving power is a blessing. It would be better still if he would leave public consciousness altogether.
