President Donald Trump (Screenshot)
Posted on 08/21/2018 8:54:29 AM PDT by jazusamo
With the continuing hysteria about Donald Trump's presidency, a few questions come to mind. The first: Can a bad man become a good president? The second: Does one's being a good man guarantee he'll be a good president? Third: Does having a good president require a good man? Is there any evidence of Lord Acton's argument that "great men are almost always bad men"?
I think former President Jimmy Carter was a good man who became a weak and bad president, both in domestic matters and in foreign affairs. President Bill Clinton was a bad man who became a reasonably good president in domestic and foreign matters. But then there was that impeachment issue that greatly tarnished his presidency.
What about our current president? I think Trump's personal behavior prior to his presidency is not something we'd call high character. We might put him down as a bad man, but what about his presidency? I think that he'd qualify for this description: a bad man but good president. The average reader might ask, "Williams, what's your evidence?" In a recent letter to me, Stephen Moore, a George Mason University graduate and a distinguished visiting fellow for the Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation, put together a list of President Trump's achievements. I recognize the possibility that they will be seen as horrible, maybe treasonous, by the nation's leftists.
Trump has appointed Neil Gorsuch and nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both men have stellar judicial qualifications and a deep respect for the U.S. Constitution. In addition, Trump has nominated more than two dozen lower court judges who have similar respect for our Constitution and are not likely to make laws from the bench.
Trump has shepherded through Congress the largest personal and corporate tax cuts since the Reagan administration. His administration has created a 35 percent reduction in regulations. Those reductions, including the rollback of costly Environmental Protection Agency regulations, have led to the biggest energy boom in history, making the U.S. the world's No. 1 energy producer and thus ending our dependence on Middle Eastern oil producers.
The Trump administration has ended the Obamacare mandate and reformed the very costly Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Helping with these economic matters is free marketer Larry Kudlow, whom Trump appointed as director of the National Economic Council. As a result of the gross domestic product's growth spurt, caused by tax cuts and deregulation, unemployment is less than 4 percent. Black unemployment is hovering around the all-time low at 6.6 percent. In fact, it's estimated that there are 6 million more jobs than workers. Also on the domestic front, the Trump administration is trying to push through sweeping prison and sentencing reforms.
President Trump has also made important gains in international affairs. He's gotten us out of the Paris climate accord. Aside from the fact that the agreement imposed costs and special disadvantages on the U.S., the Paris agreement should have been presented as a treaty to the U.S. Senate. Trump also got us out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the Iranian nuclear deal. Aside from Iran's violation of both the letter and the spirit of the agreement, it, too, should have been presented before the U.S. Senate for approval. President Barack Obama did not present either the Paris climate accord or the Iranian nuclear deal for Senate approval. He knew neither would have passed muster and instead used his executive powers.
Also on the international front, Trump has gotten North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table to negotiate denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He's gotten our NATO allies to cough up more money for their own defense. Trump is rebuilding our military strength, which is beginning to put the fear of God into our adversaries.
The bottom line is that President Donald Trump does not have the personal character that we would want our children to imitate but has turned out to be a good president, save his grossly misguided international trade policies.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
That was my first thought
He’s too accustomed to being a pet
President Donald J. Trump is our unlikely hero. He is the American savior.
And one of his great strengths is he knows how to pick a team who can get things done.
There are many, many outstanding people behind him, most whose names will never be known, who combine to make his presidency so powerful at such a critical “do or die” moment in our history.
They need our help. Pray like all of our lives depend on it.
Well said.
Isn’t it telling that one of our best presidents, Ronald Reagan followed one the worst in Carter and now another of our best presidents, Donald Trump follows another of the worst in 0bama.
Indeed! What is that saying:
Hard times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times create weak men,
Weak men create hard times.
Thank God for President Trump. Many of us appreciate him because he deals with the Left exactly as we would!
“I don’t think DJT is a bad man.”
Agree but Walter Williams is one of the few guys in the media I am willing to give a pass on that remark.
While admittedly he's off to a good start, with all due respect to the President it's too early to call him good or bad, or measure him against others. He has 2 to 6 years left to go.
Thank you. You just proved Williams’s point by using that crass comment.
Right on!
I’ve always liked W. W., but he is out of his class here. He cannot fathom the real world haggling tactics that come naturally to Trump.
W. W. is an academic head in the clouds person — less so than most economists, but never the less ...
Trump gets stuff done, under budget, ahead of schedule, period.
“Only a corporate tool would believe our trade policies are good for America or Americans.”
Consider the alternative. If we don’t get trade balanced, we will continue to bleed billions and billions. It is not pretty to do it, but we will win big time in the end.
I have begun to question the fairness of the process that led to that. Heck, I have started questioning the process that led to Nixon's resignation.
“Obama was a bad man, who became a bad President.”
More like a child I would say - and a spoiled one at that...
Ding, ding, ding - we have a thread winnah!
Nothing the Media/DNC has breathlessly warned us about regarding Trump for the past 3 years, has happened.
Then the Post WWII economy. America was Atlas, carrying the global economy oh his back. We were playing against our own money, while Europe and Japan put their money back into infrastructure.
Prof. Williams is a brilliant man.
But for some reason he does not seem to comprehend the fact that you cannot practice “free trade” economics when the rest of the world is engaged in mercantilism.
What point is that pray tell?
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.So DJT is a bad man - and what of it?
The wages of sin is death.One way to look at sin is in the context of what temptations one is subject to. Your or I, for example, have not committed the sin of driving slave labor - but we have not been subject to that temptation, either. We couldn’t get away with it.
Men with the wealth of a DJT - or with celebrity or athletic glory - are subject to sexual temptation on a scale that is comparable only to the fantasies of more typical men. And the Bible calls the fantasy sin, too.
What, then, is the difference between the WJ Clinton sexual scandals and those of DJT? One difference is that those of DJT are past tense, whereas some of those of WJC were contemporaneous with his presidency. And even the “Access Hollywood” tape contained no hint of abuse of power or of violence - just failure to resist temptation to sin. Which is why it was not, in the context of a Hillary candidacy which was simpatico with Obama’s outright opposition to religious freedom of Christians (“Little Sisters of the Poor,” anyone?) and Hillary’s response to WJC’s “indiscretions” in office, disqualifying as Hillary had hoped.
Hillary looked forward to assuring that Christians would never again get a fair hearing in the federal judiciary, and Christians knew it. DJT promised that his judicial nominees would not be unfair to Christians, by specifying a long list of people he would consider possible SCOTUS nominees. The Democrats, who love to define what/who is “out of the mainstream” for the judiciary, were frozen when Trump blew that fastball right down the middle of the plate. If even one of those potential candidates had a significant skeleton in his closet, they should have pounced. But they stood there with the bat on their shoulders - and the electorate said, “Strike Three!” Now Trump has named a second SCOTUS nominee from that list - and the Democrats’ “out of the mainstream” dog just won’t hunt.
I love Walter Williams - but he’s wrong on two counts;
1) Trump’s trade polices are not misguided. He wants free BUT FAIR trade - temporary tariffs are needed as leverage to enforce the fairness.
2) Trump is not a man of low character. Williams forgot to ask another question: “Can a good and decent man’s character be maligned by the fake news because he ran as a Republican?”
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