Worst President Ever (my title)

The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza:

Donald Trump is unique among modern Presidents in that he has no significant legislative accomplishments to show for ten months after taking office. Year one is when Presidents usually make their mark, especially if they came into office with unified control of the government, as Trump and his party did. Presidents in the first year of their first term are often at the peak of their popularity, have the biggest margins in Congress, and are free from the scandals and intense partisanship that start to gather around them later and make governing ever more difficult. By the second year, a President’s legislative agenda becomes complicated by the hesitancy of members of Congress to take risky votes as midterm elections approach, particularly if a President is unpopular. The math is stark: on average, modern Presidents have historically lost thirty House seats and four Senate seats in their first midterm elections.

Trump is governing well below the optimal levels of recent successful first-year Presidents. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s first year in office, Reagan was so personally popular that he was able to convince a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a major tax cut.

The rest is at https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-december-could-make-or-break-the-trump-presidency

About William Calvin

UW prof emeritus brains, human evolution, climate
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3 Responses to Worst President Ever (my title)

  1. Joan Conlon says:

    Thank heavens Trump has not been able to pass anything! If he fails to pass a tax cut, we next have to fear the likes of Steve Bannon garnering the forces to unseat those legislators inclined to compromise.

  2. Richard Dion says:

    IMO Trump and Tillerson are Russian agents.

  3. Lidia Filonowich says:

    Agree to the response that Worst President ever has not been able to pass anything and left the government on “the supporting levels” dysfunctional, with a great loss of US prestige all over the world, but to call them Russian agents or sympathizers so that we can do business with them, that will have to be proven in due time.
    Over this holiday weekend I caught a CNN special on “Why Trump Won” by a very respected and fair journalist, and I urge others to look for it. It focused on the changes in our culture that could have been a real and additional factor in the way the last presidential election went.

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