WASHINGTON (AP) – The most unlikely of the presidents, Donald Trump has reshuffled his office and shattered centuries-old norms and traditions, while dominating the national discourse like no other before.
Trump, ruling by whim and tweet, deepened the nation’s racial and cultural divisions and undermined faith in his institutions. His legacy: four tumultuous years marked by his dismissal, failures during the worst pandemic of the last century and his refusal to accept defeat.
He shattered conceptions of how presidents behaved and communicated, offering unvarnished thoughts and political statements alike, drawing the curtain on the American people while delighting supporters and disgruntled enemies – and sometimes allies – both in the country and in the country. and abroad.
While it would be difficult for the nation to choose another figure as disruptive as Trump, it remains to be seen how much of his footprint in the office itself, occupied by just another 44 people, will be indelible. It is already overshadowing the work of his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, who has framed his candidacy as a rejection of Trump, offering himself as the antidote to the chaos and dissent of the past four years as he vows to restore the dignity of the oval office.
“In all four years, this is someone who, on every occasion, has tried to extend presidential power beyond the limits of the law,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “He has changed the presidency in many ways, but many of them can be changed almost overnight by a president who wants to emphasize that there is a change.”
Trump’s most enduring legacy may be the use of presidential traps to erode Americans’ views on their own government institutions.
From his earliest days in office, Trump attacked the federal bureaucracy, cast a suspicious eye on career officials he called a “deep state,” and shook American confidence in government officials and government levers. Believing the investigation into Russian electoral interference was a crusade to undermine it, Trump pursued intelligence agencies and the Justice Department – calling leaders by name – and later unleashed opposition to the man leading the investigation, respected special counsel Robert Mueller.
His other targets were the legion: the Supreme Court for insufficient loyalty; the post office for the management of ballot papers by post; even the integrity of the vote itself with its unfounded claims of electoral fraud.
“In the past, losing presidents were always willing to hand over the office to the next person. They were willing to accept the vote of the American public, “said Richard Waterman, who is studying the presidency at the University of Kentucky. “What we see now is indeed an assault on the institutions of democracy.”
Current polls suggest that many Americans and most Republicans consider Biden to have been illegitimately elected, affecting his credibility as he takes office during a crisis, and has also created a pattern of deep suspicion for the upcoming election.
“This is a cancer,” Waterman said. “I do not know if the cancer can be removed from the presidency without damaging the office itself. I think he’s done huge damage in the last few weeks. “
Endangering the peaceful transfer of power was hardly Trump’s first attack on the traditions of the presidency.
He did not issue his tax returns and did not leave his business. He distributed government resources in a partisan manner and undermined his own scientists. He outraged members of his own party on Twitter and used government property for political purposes, including the White House as a backdrop for his renaming speech.
Trump used National Guard troops to eliminate a largely peaceful protest in front of the White House for a photo. He appointed a secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, who needed a waiver of Congress to serve because the retired general had not been without a uniform in the seven years required by law. In the same example, Biden followed Trump’s example, nominating the Pentagon chief, retired General Lloyd Austin, who will also need a waiver.
Trump’s disruption has also spread to the global stage, where he has questioned inviolable alliances such as NATO and bilateral partnerships with a number of allies. Its “America First” foreign policy emanated more from the preconceived notions of past lies than from current facts on the ground. He unilaterally fired troops from Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Syria, each time drawing bipartisan fire to undermine the very purpose of American deployment.
He has dropped multinational environmental agreements, an action that scientists warn could have accelerated climate change. He distanced himself from agreements that controlled Iran’s nuclear ambitions, if not regional malevolence.
And his presidency can be remembered for changing, perhaps permanently, the nature of the US-China relationship, dampening hopes for a peaceful emergence of China as a world power and laying the groundwork for a new generation of economic and strategic rivalry.
While historians agree that Trump was a singular figure in office, it will be decades before the consequences of his term are fully known. But some pieces of his legacy are already in place.
He appointed three Supreme Court justices and more than 220 federal judges, giving justice a lasting conservative doubt. He overturned regulations and oversaw an economy that exploded until it hit the pandemic. His presence increased turnout – both for him and against him – to record levels. He received unwavering loyalty from his own party, but was quick to oust anyone who displeased him.
“President Trump was the person who restored the power of the American people, not the elite in Washington, and kept our history and our institutions, while others tried to tear them down,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “The American people have chosen a successful businessman who has promised to go to Washington, not to tear him down, but to put them first.”
Sometimes Trump behaved like a spectator of his own presidency, choosing to tweet along with a cable news segment, rather than sinking into an effort to change politics. And that was one of the many ways Trump changed the way presidents communicate.
Carefully crafted policy statements took a back seat, replaced by incessant tweets and remarks to reporters about helicopter blades. The speech intensified, with swearing, personal insults and violent images infiltrating the presidential lexicon. And there were untruths – more than 23,000, according to an issue of The Washington Post – that Trump threw away regardless of their impact.
Lack of honesty played a role in his defeat in the elections that became a referendum on how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed more than 300,000 Americans.
Day after day, during his re-election campaign, Trump defied the health lines and addressed the crowds, mostly without a mask, promising that the nation would “make the corner” of the virus. He admitted that, from the beginning, he aimed to reduce the severity of the virus.
He organized outreach events at the White House and contracted the virus himself. And while his administration led Operation Warp Speed, which helped produce coronavirus vaccines in record time, Trump also undermined his pubic health officials by refusing to wear masked clothing and suggesting unproven treatments, including injecting disinfectant.
“We saw that Donald Trump’s style was one of the factors that contributed to his failure as president,” said Mark K. Updegrove, presidential historian and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. “His successor may view his presidency as a warning story.”