A quick programming note before we get into today’s piece. Tangle will be off this Monday in observance of Memorial Day, but we’ll be back in your inbox with our next regular newsletter on Tuesday, May 26. Enjoy the three-day weekend!
I have not been very happy with the president. And I haven’t been shy about that.
Like most independents, with whom Trump currently has a net –33 approval rating, I’ve found the first 16 months of his presidency alarming, frustrating, and disappointing. Less than a year into his new term, I was already writing about how things had gotten pretty bad. I’ve since written about the self-dealing and corruption, which came before the Justice Department slush fund and the IRS deal promising to never investigate or audit his business or his family for any past tax returns. After his “Praise be to Allah” social media post, which included the open threat of a war crime, I said the president seemed unwell and unfit for the job. It seems as if he innovates a new norm-breaking indignity every day, and I think being “honest,” “independent,” and “nonpartisan” necessitates calling those things out.
I’ve harbored more personal grievances, too: The president is, for example, wreaking havoc in the area where I chose to build a home. He’s bulldozing legal obstacles and ignoring public outcry to force a multi-billion-dollar border wall project that will needlessly destroy my favorite town in America, which happens to sit on the border of Texas and Mexico (and next to one of our great national parks).
Given these dynamics, and my overt unhappiness with these first 16 months of Trump’s second term, a lot of readers and listeners have written in saying either “it’d be nice if you ever talked about the good Trump is doing” or “is there anything good Trump has been doing?” Interestingly, these requests and questions don’t just come from his most ardent supporters, but also from curious folks in the middle and open-minded readers on the left.
My knee-jerk reaction to this question is, well, my job is not to share all the good things Trump is doing. I’m not his press secretary; I am a part of the press. I believe journalists and opinion columnists should have an adversarial relationship with people in power, so we should not spend time doing their work for them. When President Biden was in office, I very rarely (if ever) showered him in overt, uncomplicated praise. I never wrote a piece about all the things I liked about his administration. It’s just not my style as a writer or thinker, and it’s why so many on the right loved Tangle when Biden was president but grew frustrated with us once Trump reentered office.
My other reaction is that tackling this question is not the nature of Tangle. We are wading into controversy each day; controversy necessitates multiple viewpoints, tension, argument, and debate. And typically, the stories we cover don’t have clean answers where one side or the other is the obvious hero. Our most overt praise of political leaders or their decisions will typically come through broader retrospectives, like our reviews of a presidency or a president’s first year in office (we reviewed Biden’s presidency and Trump’s first year, for example).
Yet, I also recognize these readers are asking something simple: Do I think Trump has done any good? And to this, I think it’s important to say that, well, of course. Not just accomplishments that look good in my eyes, but ones that are broadly popular across the political spectrum. Just because I have been lobbing harsh criticisms at him does not mean his presidency is all rotten or all bad; it just means I’ve had a lot to criticize. To that end, I figured I could write up my thoughts about what’s been good so far, both through a broad political lens (i.e. things I believe are widely popular) and through more traditional metrics around presidencies.
A few notes on how I’m thinking about this list: First, a “good” listed here doesn’t mean I personally think it is good, but does mean it’s the kind of thing I think a plurality or majority of Americans support. Of course, in many cases, that includes me. Second, many of these accomplishments will have some caveats, because the world is gray — not black and white — and every upside has a little downside, too. Plus, most accomplishments in an administration’s first year or two (along with many of their problems) are the product of inherited situations.
With all that throat-clearing out of the way, some thoughts:
