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I keep reading — not just in the depths of the MAGA cesspool but increasingly in the mainstream media — that history will remember Trump as a “great” president, the most “consequential,” the most “commanding,” the most “prominent,” and so on.
John F. Harris, founding editor of Politico, calls Trump “the greatest American figure of his era.” Harris continues:
“It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record. He began a decade ago by dominating the Republican Party. He soon advanced to dominating every discussion of American politics broadly. Now, his astonishing comeback after his defeat by Joseph Biden in 2020 and the notoriety of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot makes clear [he] is someone with an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not and forge powerful, sustained connections with large swaths of people in ways that no contemporary can match. In other words: He is a force of history.”
Rubbish.
The underlying fallacy of this sort of gibberish is to confuse presidential power with presidential greatness. They’re very different animals.
Hitler was powerful, but he was not someone who decent people consider great.
Especially when it comes to the American presidency, one should never conflate power with greatness.
A truly great American president accomplishes two things:
He (or, one day, hopefully, she) significantly improves the well-being of the American people (and not to the detriment of others in the world).
Second, he strengthens the processes and institutions of American democracy.
These two goals require that a president be a moral leader. A president inevitably helps set the moral tone of the nation.
America’s worst presidents have exemplified and elicited the worst of America (other than Trump, I’d nominate James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding for the worst).
America’s greatest presidents have exemplified and elicited the best (Abraham Lincoln, FDR).
The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through America, increasing or destroying the common good, strengthening or undermining democracy.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Trump was accused of failing to pay his income taxes. His response was, “that makes me smart.”
That comment conveyed a message to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.
Trump boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”
In other words, it’s perfectly okay for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.
The peaceful transfer of power is a central feature of a democracy. Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election despite all evidence of its fairness — followed by his efforts to reverse the results, inciting a riot at the U.S. Capitol, and then lying that Biden persecuted him for trying to hold him accountable — will remain a shameful stain on this nation forever.
The essence of Trump’s failure of leadership is not that he chose one set of policies over another, not only that he divided rather than united Americans, nor even that he behaved vindictively, but that he sacrificed the processes and institutions of American democracy to achieve his personal goals, including aggregating more power than any president before him.
Trump has abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.
Trump may be powerful, but I have no doubt that he will be remembered as by far the worst president in American history — assuming history will be written by people who have access to the truth.
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