The please-don’t-elect-Trump-again op-eds are starting to appear. In the Portland Press Herald (that’s Portland, Maine), Roger Bowen (former president of SUNY-New Paltz) implores voters not to re-elect Trump. Let’s take a look at his arguments.
Donald Trump is a liar
Bowen leads off with an old favorite: Trump is a liar.
“Fact checkers say he lied or intentionally misled Americans more than 30,000 times during his four years in office.”
That’s true. Trump is a liar. The 30,000 times number comes from a weirdly obsessive tally that The Washington Post kept during Trump’s tenure. Curiously, The Post decided not to track President Biden’s in-office lies – despite the fact that Biden once claimed to have marched in the Civil Rights Movement…and to have been detained in South Africa. Both lies.
The point is: yes, Trump lies. But Biden lies, too. So if the choice is between Trump and Biden, which it most likely will be, Bowen’s argument that voters shouldn’t elect Trump because he lies doesn’t make much sense because the alternative lies, too. Does Biden lie as frequently as Trump? Probably not, but it’s hard to say because the media doesn’t monitor Biden in the same way. And either way, a willingness to lie is kind of a black-or-white thing – those willing to lie purposefully occupy a different moral plane than those unwilling to lie purposefully.
Trump is a bad president
Bowen questions whether the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 know “that Trump is, by most surveys, the second-worst president in American history, bested only by James Buchanan (1857-1861) who defended slavery and supported its continuation?”
The Trump-is-bad-at-his job argument hits closer to the point. What it really comes down to is presidential performance. So, consider Bowen’s assertion that Trump is the second-worst president ever. I’m skeptical that “most surveys” rate Trump as second-worst president ever (I also noticed that Bowen didn’t cite any specific surveys).
We’ve had some presidents whose actions (or inaction) led to an existential crisis. Franklin Pierce. James Buchanon. Herbert Hoover. We’ve had some hazardous presidencies. And while I didn’t vote for 2016 or 2020 (and will not vote for Trump in 2024), I can’t sit here and say Trump’s presidency was one of the worst ever. I wouldn’t rank Trump’s presidency as the most harmful of the 21st century – that distinction belongs to George W. Bush who used a fabricated pretext to launch a war, over-consolidated executive power, and oversaw a financial meltdown (and entered office under dubious conditions).
Donald Trump and His Appeal
Bowen’s argument descends into open questions about why Trump is popular. “This is the real mystery behind Trump’s rise in politics – why so many decent Republicans continue to support the disgraced former president. Why would so many conservative, family-oriented, hardworking and God-fearing folk support an amoral, twice-divorced, lazy egoist and likely irreligious TV personality who hs repeatedly made clear that he cares only about himself, not rural Americans or urban Americans – not even about his base?”
If you don’t know why voters (74 million of them in 2020) back Trump by now, a full eight years after he took over American politics, you’re probably a lost cause. It’s not about ego, religion, or divorce records. It’s about resentment and anger and neglect and outright dismissal. Middle of the road Americans view Trump as their vessel to relevance. That faith is misplaced, of course. Trump won’t help them.
But he offers to do so, whereas everyone/everything else –from academia, to corporate-America, to the government and its elected officials – has long-since adopted a language and a mindset that Bowen himself employs: “But who are Trump’s erstwhile supporters? Older white men, who lack a college degree, call themselves “Christian,” live outside of cities and earn a modest income. In brief, they are not representative of the wider American population.”
That mocking, institutionalized scorn perhaps has more to do with Trump’s success than anything Donald Trump himself has done.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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