Trump's Legacy

Even if one is irreconcilably opposed to Biden's agenda, one has to admire the flurry of activity surrounding his first week in office. There is no disputing the fact that the new president "hit the ground running." Another feature of the new administration that hasn't received as much attention from the news media, but is arguably even more important than Biden's actions, is the relative peace and quiet that has emanated from the White House. There haven't been any divisive tweets, statements or incitements to riot.

Nevertheless, over this new beginning, it seems as though a dark cloud has been hanging over the entire nation in the form of one question: How are we to deal with the man who just vacated the Oval Office? The Congress of the United States has been grappling with the question of whether or not to hold Donald Trump accountable for what happened on January 6th, and the great lie which inspired it all - that he was the real winner of the 2020 election. For now, the answer to that question (How are we to deal with him?) seems to be different depending on the party affiliation of the person whom we are asking. Democrats generally demand accountability, and Republicans generally offer excuses and justifications.

Historians, however, have a tendency to examine the evidence and arrive at something approaching a coherent evaluation of a president's tenure in office. The distance of years and the cooling of the passions of the moment tend to produce a more objective assessment of the subject, and they also tend to result in something approaching a consensus opinion about the legacy of the person (or the consequences of his/her actions/policies). And, while I wouldn't count on Democrats and Republicans reaching anything approaching a consensus about what should happen to Donald John Trump, as a historian, I think Trump's chances for receiving high marks in that inevitable future assessment aren't very good.

As a matter of fact, I find myself in almost complete agreement with Mark Updegrove's verdict in the article, Donald Trump and the verdict of history: Analysis. In the article, Updegrove cites Claire Booth Luce's thesis that historians tend to summarize - and that their conclusions are very often distilled into a single sentence. What would that sentence be for Trump?

Updegrove cites the two great crises of Trump's presidency as the most likely sources for that answer. He wrote: "Given the patterns of history, it is likely that Trump will be remembered primarily for the central crises of his administration. The first is the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst health calamity to befall the nation in over a century. While Trump can't be blamed for creating the pandemic, he will be held to account for allowing it to spread unchecked with no coherent plan in place as he played it down for fear of it putting a damper on a roaring economy, ignoring science and insisting that the virus would magically go away."

The second crisis was the final act of his presidency. Updegrove wrote: "But even more so, Trump will be remembered for the other crisis of his administration, one very much of his own doing: baselessly challenging the integrity of a presidential election that led to the seditious siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6. The commander-in-chief stirred up a mob to take down the federal government as lawmakers convened to certify the election in an attempt to overturn the will of the people and, antithetically, "take back our country," resulting in the deaths of five people including a police officer who was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher. The attempted coup is a black mark that even the Teflon Trump can't dodge."

Like Updegrove, I'm confident that Trump and his supporters would like for him to be remembered for the nation's economic performance prior to the pandemic, his judicial appointments, tax cuts and deregulation. Nevertheless, I'm afraid that his abject failure in handling the two most important crises of his reign will blot out any memory of those things. Indeed, I find myself in complete agreement with Mr. Updegrove's speculation about the future historian's one sentence about Trump: "he divided the nation and fought democracy -- and democracy won."