The post-mortem on the Trump presidency
Lesson summary
Hi there, thanks for joining us for another Plain English lesson. I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and this is lesson number 316. You can find the full lesson at PlainEnglish.com/316.
Set aside the Tweets, set aside the personality, set aside the chaos in personnel and the other controversies of the Donald Trump presidency; set aside, even, what you think about what Trump did as president. In this lesson, we’ll talk about how Trump’s accomplishments compare to what he promised to do. Think of it as a report card, using the criteria he himself set out in the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s report card, judged on his own criteria
To start our post-mortem, let’s start at the beginning. One of Trump’s first priorities was to change our system of health insurance. When he took office, Trump promised to repeal and replace a big health care bill passed during the Obama administration. He didn’t have much of a legislative strategy beyond the slogan “repeal and replace,” and his effort failed in Congress. This was a huge defeat and it came early in his presidency.
However, he later notched up some wins. Trump delivered on several economic promises. First, he passed a tax reform bill, and this is his biggest policy success as president. The reform lowered our corporate tax rate, making American companies more competitive in the world. It lowered rates on most individuals and corrected some imbalances in the tax code. This was a big win for him, but it would be the high-water mark of his legislative agenda.
Trump also drastically reduced the regulatory burden on business as he promised. For those interested in a business-friendly climate, the reduction in regulation was welcome—a significant ongoing win for Trump throughout his presidency, even if it didn’t get much publicity.
What about on trade, one of Trump’s favorite topics? He spooked business across North America when he pulled out of NAFTA—a continent-wide trade agreement. But he settled nerves again when he negotiated a replacement treaty. This represented little net change to the prior agreement among Canada, Mexico, and the United States. We can call this a Trump victory in appearance only.
Other trade partners were not so lucky. America pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast regional trade agreement, and stalled progress on trade with Europe. The Trump administration used trade as a weapon and imposed tariffs on China and other countries. This did protect some American jobs, but at great cost to the economy overall. This can be considered a draw—neither a win nor a loss.
Overall, though, the American economy did very well during the Trump years. What about his other accomplishments?
Apart from the tax cuts, criminal justice reform was the only other notable new law passed in the Trump era and the only significant law that passed with the support of the opposite political party. This reduces the long mandatory prison sentences, reduces the population in federal prisons, and supports programs to help former prisoners re-enter society. This was a big Trump win and figured heavily in his re-election campaign.
Judicial appointments were a huge promise kept. Through a combination of luck and shrewd political maneuvering, Trump had the opportunity to appoint three new justices to our nine-seat Supreme Court, the most of any one-term president since the 1950s. What’s more, he worked closely with his party leaders in the US Senate to confirm dozens of conservative-leaning federal judges to lower courts. Watching him work through judicial appointments was like watching a totally different Donald Trump: he was highly effective, shrewd, and—dare I say—disciplined. This was a huge win for him.
Trump famously promised to build a wall along the southern border and to make Mexico pay for it. At first glance, this was a bust. Only token sections of a border wall were built, and Trump got along unexpectedly well with the Mexican president, a fellow populist. But immigration, both legal and illegal, did slow during Trump’s presidency. Security at the border has increased and fewer people applied for temporary or permanent residency. So while the wall didn’t get built, and while the southern border remains dysfunctional, the flow of immigration did slow. Call this a partial victory.
Trump came to office promising to “drain the swamp.” That was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Washington, DC’s geography—the city was originally built on a swamp near the Potomac River. What he meant was that he would clear out the corrupt insider politicians and replace them with competent people. He did neither: he didn’t clear out corrupt political insiders; he even needed them, as any politician does. But he also introduced his own brand of corrupt insiders and installed his family members and political donors to key positions. An unusual number of his associates were indicted and convicted of crimes. Very little about corruption in Washington improved during his time there—and “drain the swamp” barely figured in his re-election campaign. This would have to be a loss.
How about Trump’s foreign policy? He moved America’s embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, both crowd-pleasing moves to his base and promises kept. He promoted himself as a big dealmaker, saying he could personally solve a lot of the world’s problems. He signaled support to the opposition in Venezuela, but didn’t follow through and didn’t get any results. Ever the showman, he flattered North Korea’s dictator—and claimed to make friends with him—but this didn’t result in any change either for good or ill. He is slowly backing away from the longest war in America’s history in Afghanistan and started no new conflicts. America’s reputation in the world suffered during the Trump presidency—but that hardly mattered to Trump himself. Judging by his own priorities, Trump’s foreign policy was probably neither a huge success nor a huge failure.
There was one big foreign policy success, however, and that was the Abraham Accords. This is the set of agreements between Israel, on the one hand, and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and other countries in the Middle East and Africa on the other. These agreements establish normal relations between Israel, a major American ally, and countries that had previously refused to recognize it. This is a huge win for Trump’s administration, but it came too late. The news was lost among COVID and the next election.
Whatever you think of his priorities and actions, this list of accomplishments was about average for a first-term president. He got some big wins, a few small wins, suffered a couple of stinging defeats, and fought to a few draws. The economy did well. Even with all the drama, the Twitter, the impeachment, the feuds, and the controversies, it would probably have been enough to win him a second term, if not for COVID.
Have you done a post-mortem?
It was strange to look back on this. It feels like we’ve lived 20 years of drama in four years of elapsed time. It is also strange to think that Trump’s accomplishments were not too different from what a generic Republican would have done. It’s just that it was shrouded in a cloud of constant controversy that it was hard to even think about what was truly going on. What a weird time.
By the way, a post-mortem is like an evaluation of how you did, after the fact. It’s often done after a loss of some kind. If you work in professional services, you probably make proposals. In that line of work, you win some and you lose some. But after you lose, it’s helpful to look back and see what you did well and what you didn’t do as well. That’s called a post-mortem—or an analysis you did after something is over.
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