The Economist this week has two articles that are openly apologist for Trump's four years of chaos. That's disappointing. With respect to foreign affairs the newspaper argued that things aren't as bad as they might have been. That's a ludicrous standard. To suggest that we are better of because, for example, Trump didn't start a nuclear war is absurd. It also ignores the fact that we only avoided many of the sinkholes into which Trump was happily careering because of the guardrails erected by the few adults in the room and the stalwart efforts of the civil servants (thank heavens for the "deep state").
He has made no progress with North Korea other than to give Kim Jong Un more time to develop ballistic missiles. His China policy has failed; China has made no concessions on intellectual property, and the Sino-US relationship is worse than at any time since before Nixon and Kissinger. His tariffs have had no effect on China's policy other than to make it more obdurate, but have cost Mid-western farmers dearly, and as a consequence American ta payers everywhere. Iran is only exercising restraint in the hope that once he's gone the JCPOA will be effectively reinstated (though Biden will have his work cut out here given the damage done to that relationship by Trumps "maximum pressure" policy). He has alienated European allies and befriended autocrats like Putin, Erdogan and Bolsonaro. He has sided with Israel over the Palestinians and its policy of annexation in the West Bank. While that may be morally hard to defend, politically the consequence in the Middle East are less sever than they would have been 15 years ago; the advent of fracking has removed the US dependency on Arab oil which in turn has weakened the Arab states bargaining power. Fracking was not Trumps invention, nor have his policies here done much (excluding environmental damage) except at the margin. And that reduced dependency on foreign oil and that anticipation of reduced world demand was the driver behind the deals between several of the smaller Arab states and Israel. None were the monumental foreign policy achievements he trumpeted, but the result of pushing against a now open door. Mid-East petro-states understand that they meed to move their economies away from oil and Israel is a local tech giant that has much to offer. NASFA 2.0 was in the works before he took office - so by the "he didn't do too much damage" logic the Economist is using that he didn't screw it up ranks as an achievement. He has cut immigration which while "keeping the country white" may have adverse long term consequences for tech and demographically.
Domestically the Economist touts the gains in the stock market. But the market is only where it is because of the transfer of wealth to companies' bottom lines from future generations who will have to pay down the debt incurred in the process. That's not a policy achievement but a fiscal a slight of hand and the vaunted reinvestment the tax cut was supposed to bring about never happened. Some may have seen a reduction in their personal income tax except in the states Trump wanted to punish for being Democratic (California and New York) where he eliminated the federal tax deduction for state and local income tax, and that may have buoyed some economic growth. But employment grew no faster under Trump than under Obama. Manufacturing jobs have not come back to the US in anything like the numbers Trump boasted they would. He has undermined trust in institutions from science writ large, the press, and government. He has made relying on instinct and emotion a legitimate alternative to facts, knowledge, research and hard work. He has stoked white supremacy and division, a Pandora's box it will take generations to shut, and tacitly encouraged armed insurrection in the defense of whiteness. He has politicized historically apolitical government agencies like the CDC, the EPA, NOAA, the USPS and Department of Justice by appointing loyal sycophants with right wing agendas at their heads. He has sidelined, or worse yet threatened retaliation, against career diplomats and civil servants when they present him with facts and analyses that puncture his Fox-induced alternate-reality bubble.
And of course there is the covid-19 debacle. The botched response was a much to do with messaging and public perception as it was to do with a policy failure. Two things might have prevented the US from suffering the horrendous death toll it has endured, not to mention the economic consequences of not getting the pandemic under control. The first was testing a tracing which the administration failed to ramp up with sufficient urgency to make a difference. The second was mask-wearing which would have slowed the spread, allowing hospitals to cope better, reducing the death toll and allowing testing and tracing efforts to isolate cases, again arresting the progress of the disease. Relatedly, Trump's (and the GOPs) failed attempts to eliminate Obamacare and the healthcare coverage it provided, without any coherent solution with which to replace it is another case of a the Economist's "success" in spite of, not because of, Trump.
To note, as even some of his supporters do, that he is a terrible human being but excuse his personal failing and foibles because he has "gotten so much accomplished" is to ignore and misconstrue his record. History will document his four years as nothing but a string dismal failures, mitigated only by the groundwork laid by his predecessors and the efforts of civil service policy professionals.
In the end, the damage he has caused to the fabric of society is severe and possibly irreversible. If America makes it through the next two months without politically motivated bloodshed that will be a miracle. But it remains to be seen if in fact he has so damaged the institutions of democracy to mortally wound the American democratic experiment. Indeed Trump was an experiment from which the US could learn never to repeat. But if things go badly, indeed if Trump were somehow to remain in office, the possibility of the US, the worlds preeminent military and economic power, becoming an autocratic or even a failed state is a terrifying prospect truly worthy of Halloween.
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