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These are correct, though I would quibble about the "new war" thing a little. Obama pulled the number of troops deployed overseas down sharply, and they increased slightly under Trump [0]. I would also say the Trump administration's handling of COVID-19 is one of the worst in the world in terms of outcomes. It's hard to imagine any other reasonably possible president--including Republicans--doing so badly, and this is solely because they chose to politicize mask wearing. It was a historic blunder that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and billions if not trillions of dollars. Not even the Iraq and Afghanistan wars can compare, which is a wild thing to say. Second, Trump's agenda was largely ineffectual. He didn't significantly alter immigration policy, his trade wars failed, and his tax cuts failed to produce significant economic growth (though they did increase the deficit). Diplomatically his administration was a complete failure, and it's hard to not lay some of the blame for Ukraine at his feet--whether its his weakening of NATO, his strong support for Putin, or his attempts to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless they helped him tar a political rival. Finally, I would point to opportunity costs. Presidents can't tread water; they need to make progress over their terms on multiple time scales. While the administration was pursuing a poorly targeted agenda that would ultimately fail anyway, they were ignoring some other serious problems: climate change, US election integrity, labor relations, tech monopolies, prescription drug costs, student debt, housing costs, etc. The Trump administration slept on all of these, putting us four years behind. That's... well it's just very bad. [0]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili... |