Many of us have wondered a time or two, what’s with this man in charge? Is he really as cuckoo koko puffs as he sometimes seems?
I would wager that he is, though he really seems to be aiming at something more meaningful. I would wager that his real aim is to be taken seriously as a leader and to leave an enviable record of accomplishments to keep his offspring and the public proud of him.
Unfortunately, if that is correct as an assumption or bet, his aim is way off. Mr. Trump will not be remembered fondly as an effective leader, but instead as one feckless and rather foolish. Rather than people thinking of him as a memorial leader like say, Rameses, Julius Caesar, King Henry or Edward, etc., the more likely comparison wil be former presidents Thaddeus Stevens or Millard Fillmore.
One has to think beyond one’s own ego and what immediately feels good to oneself to demonstrate lasting leadership qualities. One must also think about immediate and lasting impacts on the constituency one is leading in making big and small decisions. Myopic thinking tends to severely limit positive alternatives.
In the assessments Trump earned from his first term, he basically ranked at the bottom of past presidents in terms of leadership and consequential decision-making for the public. After the first year of this second presidency, he seems poised to expand his ranking at the bottom, surpassing even Thaddeus Stevens and Millard Fillmore as failures at being the POTUS, in spite of favorable circumstances. Mr. Trump may actually become the first POTUS literally impeached from office because of provable cupidity.
Compare that to the presidency of Barack Obama, a former POTUS Mr. Trump seems to love to hate (reports from the White House regularly describe Trump’s constant attention to erasing anything reminescent of Obama’s effectiveness in and out of the White House, including trying to remove Obama’s presidential picture and other White House momentoes).
The assessments of most professional presidential historians is that Mr. Obama ranks between the 8th, 9th or 10th greatest POTUS in American history, while thus far, Trump ranks dead last in a heat with Millard Fillmore and Thaddeus Stevens.
In June of this year, the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Public Center is due to open in Chicago to a world-wide audience. Many former living presidents will be invited to the opening. Neither the invitees nor the guests will include Mr. Trump, who will quite probably never rise above the shadow cast by Mr. Obama’s achievements as president and American statesman. Most unfortunately, it will not be the studied heroes of American and Western civilization that Mr. Trump will be positively compared to. For shame.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.