Trump Was Incredibly Bad At Presidenting

Put aside everything else, and it's a job. He never had the skills for it. Still doesn't.

There’s a great New York Times write-up of a poll asking people what they remember about Trump’s presidency (see also Seth Masket’s post; he and John Sides said typically smart things for the story). The gist of it is that Trump’s supporters remember the economy being great; his opponents remember his many forms of personal misbehavior; and everyone is massively repressing their memories of the pandemic.

So one general point, one complaint, and then a comment about Trump as president.

First: Presidents are important - they’re the single most important elected official in the nation - but the presidency is only one portion of a complex political system of separated institutions sharing powers, which in turn is only partially responsible for the various things that happen in the US while someone is president.

So for something like the economy, the president matters…but so does Congress. And the courts. And the Fed, which is in some ways independent but also is influenced by Congress and by presidents. And the rest of the executive branch - which is also influenced by Congress and by presidents. And even state and local governments. And broader economic trends such as business cycles and foreign competition, and wars and pandemics and more, much of which is beyond the reach of the US government. Especially in the short and medium term.

What else matters? Previous decisions by all those players, before (and sometimes long before) the president in question took office.

The point here isn’t to criticize voters, who can’t be expected to track all of this. Besides, voter reaction to perceived economic change and other policy outcomes creates healthy incentives for presidents. But it’s worth constantly reminding ourselves that regardless of presidency-obsessed political coverage, the actual US political system is a lot more than just presidents.

Now the complaint: Look, I understand why lots of people - not only Trump supporters - claim that the economy was great during his presidency and terrible during Joe Biden’s presidency. There are real reasons for those perceptions, and for the most part they’re just how these things work.

But I have no patience at all for those who have contributed to the widespread and completely backwards sense that the US is currently at war after a peaceful four years when Trump was president. The reality of course is the opposite, with the active war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as well as US involvement in Afghanistan continuing through Trump’s presidency and ending after Biden took office - with well over 100 US troop deaths in those theaters during the Trump presidency that collectively received, what, one percent of the media attention of the 13 troop deaths in Afghanistan in August 2021? Not to mention that the US is killing a lot fewer people through drone strikes during the Biden presidency.

Of course, there are legitimate criticisms, agree with them or not, about how Biden has handled foreign policy. But it’s simply not factual to claim the US has been at war now, but not then. Lots of people responsible - including, naturally, Donald Trump, but also many who have no obvious interest in misleading the public. Oy.

And now for the comment about remembering Trump’s presidency:

Damn he was bad at the job.

I was one of the political scientists who participated in a “rank the presidents” survey and it was easy to place Trump dead last, given everything.¹ But the truth is that even if Trump had followed and accepted the law, including the Constitutional “emoluments” provision, and even if he didn’t provoke an insurrection in support of his bid to overturn an election he lost, and even if he didn’t have a history of sexual assault, and even if he didn’t regularly make bigoted remarks and encourage bigotry…he was still quite a bit worse at the regular parts of presidenting than any of the modern presidents, at least.²

It’s hard to know where to begin, and I’m obviously not going to convince anyone in a few short paragraphs or even a full item, but even given how important all that other stuff is his gross incompetency at the job is worth remembering. Trump had terrible personnel judgement. He was easily manipulated by everyone - bureaucrats, foreign leaders, members of Congress, pretty much anyone who figured him out, which apparently wasn’t difficult. He didn’t even attempt to talk to the half (or really a bit more than half) of the nation who hadn’t supported him.

But if you had to focus on just one thing, it’s that by all accounts he utterly failed at the thing that Richard Neustadt thought was the most important thing for presidents to do in order to succeed: Collecting information. Trump didn’t read. He didn’t pay attention during briefings. He didn’t care about policy. He didn’t even bother, as far as anyone can tell, to learn the basic rules of the constitutional system. He did apparently watch a lot of cable news networks, which is…let’s just say not a great way of learning much.³

Look: This part of it doesn’t have much to do with vote choice. Ronald Reagan was better at the job than Jimmy Carter, but I’d have advised mainstream liberal Democrats to vote for Carter in 1980; I suspect Walter Mondale would have been better at the job than Reagan, but conservative Republicans would have been nuts to vote for Mondale in 1984. There is a strong argument that conservative Republicans who have a strong commitment to democracy should abandon Trump, but it’s not based on how bad he is at the normal aspects of the job. It would have been one of many good reasons for Republicans to nominate someone else, though.

Bottom line is that Trump didn’t know much and doesn’t even know how to learn more, and you can’t be good at the job without knowing much. That, even more than his disregard for the rule of law, made him a very dangerous president for four years, and given that there’s no evidence he’s learned anything it would make him a very dangerous president again.

1. Yes, all the criticisms of such exercises are correct. Who cares? They’re fun, and they give everyone an excuse to look critically at the careers of presidents and the presidency. Just don’t take the ranking part too seriously.

2. Worst ever? I would say so, but those more expert than I am about 19th century presidents (Julia?) could convince me otherwise. Again, that’s excluding all the stuff that makes it an easy call to place Trump dead last.

3. It’s a good idea for presidents to watch some TV news - not only is it good to know how people outside the president’s orbit are talking about things, but it’s also a check against groupthink and a way for presidents to be exposed to ideas that the White House staff and agencies don’t want them to hear. But a little goes a long way.