Found this in our local paper and was struck by how well President Trump stacks up to the Presidential history of our best Presidents.
Author is a well known journalist and now teaches at CMU.
No president since FDR has had remotely the impact on two branches of the American government that Mr. Trump has had.
The changes he wrought in the presidency are complemented with the changes he wrought in the bureaucracy, the result being an overhaul of the executive branch. Whether that endures is one of the principal political mysteries of the age.
But there is no question that the changes he has wrought in the judicial branch are transformative. In installing three Supreme Court justices in one term, he set the high court on a new conservative path.
In the last century, Warren Harding, Harry Truman, Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan appointed four justices, but they did not alter the executive branch nearly as fundamentally as Mr. Trump. The president’s 53 circuit court appointees in four years approaches the number Barack Obama (55), George W. Bush (62) and Bill Clinton (66) placed in eight years.
Mr. Trump’s impact is all the more astonishing when his meager legislative record is compared with that of his one-term antecedent, Mr. Polk, who set out to accomplish four goals and achieved them: settling the Oregon boundary question, cutting tariffs, creating an independent treasury system as an alternative to a national bank, and acquiring California and New Mexico.
Earlier one-term presidents left behind party upheaval (William Howard Taft, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter) or economic upheaval (Mr. Hoover, the elder Mr. Bush). Mr. Trump departs with a strong stock market but high unemployment — and a virus still raging.
But it already is clear that some of the Trump initiatives will endure.
If health and perspective allow. President Trumps legacy may not have concluded with the virus infused election of 2020.
