Five Lessons Trump Taught Us

His political career is like a Trump University for the rest of us

The Trump presidency is likely to be studied more than any other president’s other than Lincoln and maybe Washington. While Trump did not lead America through a war or depression, expand civil rights, or, truth be told, do much of anything positive, he did come close to trashing the Constitution and democracy. That makes him historic. It also makes his presidency a treasure trove of lessons needed to prepare us for any future Trumps, including Florida Governor DeSantis.

The five lessons are simple but vitally important. I see and read things that violate them daily.

Experience counts

Unqualified, inexperienced people should not be president (or hold other high-level government positions). We need to identify a set of basic requirements and develop a means to evaluate anyone who wants to run for president against them. The requirements should include a working knowledge of the Constitution, a basic familiarity with world politics and history, and an understanding of U.S. history.

Our existing political parties, which tend to become captive to strong personalities, cannot be trusted to either develop the requirements or apply them. The dilemma is to figure out a neutral, trusted party to do the work.

Trump’s inexperience, coupled with other issues, made him the president he was, which was a dangerous, racist sociopath. He was and remains an embarrassment to the United States who not only engaged regularly in clownish behavior but he reminded the rest of the world not to trust the U.S. Any country that can elect a reality TV star as president cannot be trusted.

Celebrity counts for too much in politics

The path to political power for celebrities is too easy. I am regularly amazed by otherwise intelligent people telling me that a movie or rock star would make a great president. They wouldn’t. The job of president is different from writing, performing music, or acting.

But we also have celebrity politicians. To pick on just one, consider Stacey Abrams, who was touted as a good choice to run as Joe Biden’s vice president in 2020 despite having lost her recent race for Georgia governor. Why Abrams? At the time, I was told she “had charisma” and “would shake things up.” Never mind that she appears to know little about economics, foreign policy, or the military.

Donald Trump has made a practice of judging fitness for office and electability on the basis of looks or name recognition. Consider Dr. Oz, currently a candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, and ex-football star Hershel Walker, running for Senate in Georgia, as two examples.

Also, think about reality TV star Donald Trump. Would he have won the 2016 Republican nomination and the presidency had he not been on The Apprentice?

Trump is the epitome of why celebrities lacking government experience don’t belong in politics. Trump’s ignorance of government contributed to his regularly ignoring laws and breaking them.

The Constitution did not protect us from a mentally ill president and needs revision

Donald Trump’s recent statement that a president can declassify top secret documents by simply deciding to do so, without even informing anyone else, was ridiculous. But is there anything specific in the Constitution suggesting that a president doesn’t have this power?

And what about a president that asks his Attorney General or Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to “take care of our enemies?” How do you hold a president responsible for this type of abuse? Impeach them and remove them from office? Trump taught us that the impeachment/conviction process doesn’t work in practice.

It is not readily clear how the authority of the president can be better circumscribed, but one place to start is for Congress to reduce grants of discretion to the executive branch. All federal expenditures should be subject to specific appropriations or authorizations from Congress. Actions by a president that are viewed as contrary to statute or unconstitutional should be subject to review by a special court established for that purpose. The court should be authorized to opine on the legality of the president’s action but not to overturn it. Challenges to overturn action should remain subject to impeachment and removal or to other judicial challenges in existing courts.

The trappings of our now imperial presidency need to be scaled back.

The United States now spends hundreds of millions of dollars to give the president a lifestyle that exceeds any monarch’s. The country spends billions on fleets of presidential helicopters and 747s. The president has unrestricted use of the White House and, it seems, other federal property. Remember Trump’s political rally at the White House? Remember how the January 6 rally preceding the assault on the Capitol was held right in front of the White House? The president should not be authorized to use the trappings of the presidency to boost their own celebrity or to convince ignorant people that the president’s pronouncements, regardless of how ridiculous, are the law of the land.

The British prime minister lives at 10 Downing Street. Why can’t the American president live more modestly? It is likely that security for the president could be maintained without treating the president like a King or Queen.

One huge benefit of scaling back the trappings of the presidency would be to make the office less attractive to narcissists like Trump. Trump was more interested in the luxury and celebrity provided by the office of the president than he was in the actual job.

Our current system doesn’t hold presidents accountable

I have already noted that the impeachment and conviction process is not effective. Trump taught us that. What about crimes committed before, during, and after being president? Should the president, and especially ex-presidents, be subject to the same laws as the rest of us?

Reform should start with limiting the president’s pardon power. It has been subject to regular abuse. And Trump may yet tell us that he secretly pardoned himself, without making a paper record of it, before he left office. The pardon power needs to be circumscribed to exclude self-pardons, pardons of crimes associated with sedition against the government, and crimes committed by members of the president’s family or his top political appointees.

The scope of “executive privilege” also needs to be reviewed to prevent an ex-president accused of wrongdoing from using it to obstruct justice by claiming that communications with former associates are covered by it.

More lessons

There are, of course, more lessons to be learned from the dark period better known as the Trump presidency. Historians and political scientists are already at work identifying them. Someday maybe a university could be created around the knowledge. It could be called Trump University.

What We Learn from Trump Experience