The cup runneth over with lessons from blistering WH crises, almost all self-induced. Gosh, even low-information dimwits should learn from reckless mistakes – but that demands a sane learning curve.
Defenders blame destiny, divinities, dastardly divisions, even serendipity to explain why so many presidents face plant by the end, cursed with bonehead decisions. Competence must have fled with the fantasy MAGA golden age. The “great man theory of history” – by which a dominant personality imposes his will on an age – is kaput, measured by the last 25 years of serial blunders.
One wonders why we bother to elect misfits whose spiel is infinitely better than their misrule. And when an experienced hack delivers beyond admittedly low expectations, like Biden, his popularity plummets before getting dumped — ultimately pushed by breaking one’s word (one term), looking too old, backing genocide, and enduring the bugaboo of high inflation.
One wonders if leaders are in charge, beyond the controlling oligarchs and corporations with enough money to fund swamp “think tanks” and pump out noisome propaganda. But huge stock assets don’t guarantee blunderheads from equally egregious missteps. Take Elon Musk and DOGE, or tech billionaires, to a one convinced they’re all universal, Renaissance geniuses. What high price will they pay for their crude payola to the Inauguration of Autocracy, let alone helping bulldoze the one-time “people’s house” for gold-plated crassness (the closest MAGA comes to a fake golden age)?
First lesson is that corrupt, merciless systems eat up presidents, whether the sleazy Clinton, well-intentioned Obama, the misbegotten Dubya, or today’s demented one committed to outdo his every past outrage before getting the heave ho. Starting with Clinton, how rare to find correlation between a presidential campaign vs. what happened or what a leader is “forced” to do. Oddly, what stands out are not external Black Swans (invasions, pandemics, natural disasters, global depressions) but catastrophic misjudgments and the gross inadequacy of the players.
Unforced errors galore
Take Clinton’s health care mandate, starting out popular but quickly diluted by picking the unelected Hillary as czar (vs. a bipartisan, independent team). It then faced predictable rightwing flak before formulating a highly complex system vs. piece-meal, incremental reforms with fewer parts to challenge/reject. All in all, the Clintons badly underestimated the clout of the health insurance lobby and never inspired massive public backing that could overcome such big obstacles.
Ditto, the whole NAFTA blunder emphatically alienated now displaced blue-collar workers (setting up the next two GOP wins). Throw in totally unforced Bubba sex-scandals (and impeachment), a derailing that well exposed Clinton’s character flaws. Lesson: big (systemic) proposals will fail if ducks aren’t in a row, input must be widespread, and predictable consequences (on health care and NAFTA) should be scrutinized. In short, this populist-sounding Clinton let corporations win and American workers lose. Voters should have at least learned that perverse sexual appetites augur badly for the stability and status of any president. The Epstein morass will never end. That Dubya, Obama, and Biden did not cheat on their wives minimized the damage opponents could pull off.
Dubya’s reign, spawned as illegitimate because Florida mayhem and the Supreme Court disrupted legitimate votes, was stumbling around until terrorism, the most notable external event since Clinton, struck home. But Bush-Cheney solutions misread on purpose and started a neocon war with the wrong country, setting up a predictable fiasco. Will voters ever insist again politicians must get public and Congressional support for wars beforehand, to avoid squandering billions and killing millions of innocents unrelated to 9/11? How about right now public approval of incinerating non-belligerent fishing boats??
Bad wars, especially dependent on ego or outdated, cold-war ideology, should spur impeachment talk (whether Iraq or Greenland). Other lessons: 1) never let the VP selection head (Cheney) nominate himself; and 2) if you elect a dim weakling with a famous name, stronger, darker personalities will dominate (re Stephen Miller). While Reagan demonstrated the downsides of re-electing a compromised codger not quite in charge, Dubya proved what disasters follow a younger codger not quite in charge – and not savvy enough to know what’s up.
Obama could have improved his prep and skill-set
Obama offers very different lessons. First, two years of Senate experience (after a modest state career) means your learning curve is formidable – so one goes along with the establishment flow (especially on banking recessions). Obama (again) showed that slickness, whether Dem or rightwing, dishes out great-sounding but empty rhetoric (“urgency of now,” hope and change). Even Obamacare, no small achievement, subsidized coverage but ignored bigger, systemic problems unfixed to this day. As real shock and awe thunders from Trump, the question is whether voters ever realize they wildly overpay for charisma in the service of bullshit. Further, whatever the positives of electing the first non-white president (and Obama discretely handled race), that breakthrough triggered a staggering, depressing ocean of racism, awarding leverage to MAGA’s crude bigotry.
Ditto, nominating Hillary (a category positive) exposed widespread resistance to a non-male president. That Harris never won a primary only added to her double whammy as a woman and a minority. Hope and change were gunned down by misogyny and bias. Except for Biden, three of the last four Dem picks had to promote their wares PLUS overcome irrational prejudices. No happy admission – now favoring white men with experience and prominence (but not too much age) over the next MAGA maniac.
Biden teaching moments are known to all: keep your word (one term) and know your limits when ambition blinds you to lost skills; and never, never should a president handpick his VP because “primaries are inconvenient” (not even true). That Trump (Clinton and Obama) were superior to dishing out verbal comfort food than Biden goes without saying: no recent figure accomplished more legislatively yet was worse at using media or personality to promote genuine wins.
Trump – and America’s zero learning curve
Trump’s non-stop rampaging reminds all (rather too late) that even entrenched veterans have more respect for law, all citizens, precedents, and the stability of American institutions, like voting or separation of powers. The big takeaway: elect a ruthless, thin-skinned, career criminal addicted to own made-up reality, chronic defamation and a void of compassion – and voila! corrupt Trumpism rules. Ditto, elect an ignorant, bigoted, nasty-mouthed, vengeful billionaire know-it-all, laced with sex and tax scandals, plus bankruptcies – and you hit the jackpot: the worst president not just in history but imaginable. The only positive news, rushing in daily, is that Trump’s persona, methods, psychopathology, and goals (steal or grab every buck) are on full display for all to see.
So, general conclusions emerge: 1) character matters because that’s the best future predictor; 2) career success matters because past is prologue; 3) competence matters because the opposite – willful pigheadedness (as with Covid) – is catastrophic; 4) expertise matters because the world is complicated, unintended consequences common; 5) good faith matters, otherwise the worst lying knaves gain ground, devastating the idea of truth as measure; 6) judgment matters because no easy decisions fit complex challenges; 7) empathy and tolerance matter because diversity is us, whether bigots like it or not; 8) intelligence matters because the presidency is the hardest job, reality unpredictable; 9) emotional intelligence matters because appointments are among the most important WH tasks; and 10) principles (even a facade of consistency) matter because otherwise everything is for sale, even justice, legality and the Constitution.
I would be more optimistic about conventional politics if I thought that the sovereignty of self-government would inspire a rational majority to study, then learn from history, testing all promises against results, and then improving collective judgment by taking the big picture. Today, obscene spending, bought media, and celebrity reality as thin as a veneer dominate. Democracy is only as good as its educated citizenry for there is no other veto to fooling too many of the people too much of the time.
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