Four years ago I placed a marker for President Trump. I recorded several indications of how our nation was doing and suggested that we could compare how we did in the last four years.

Interestingly, President Trump did well in several of them. Looking at the stock market we’ve seen increases in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (19,732 to 30,930), the NASDAQ (5540 to 13,197), and Standard and Poors (2263 to 3748). Despite the volatility of employment over the last year, the unemployment average rose from 4.7% to 6.7%. And the number of Americans employed rose from 123,570,000 to 158,130,000.

On the other hand his approval rating has dropped from 38% to 34% (it never hit 50%). The federal deficit rose from $590 billion to $3.3 trillion while the federal debt rose from $20 trillion to $27 trillion. The percentage of Americans was 11% and I was not able to find the current percentage.

The failure of the Trump Administration was, in the end, not economic. Here are my thoughts on why his administration failed:

• He wasn’t able to keep several of his promises: His 2016 campaign centered on building a wall on the Mexican border (and have Mexico pay for it). While there has been some building, the wall he promised never happened and Mexico didn’t pay a penny (or peso). He promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something cheaper and better. He was unable to repeal it and never developed a better plan. He promised coal miners that he would “bring back coal” and that never happened. He promised to “win” a trade war with China that did nothing more than impoverish farmers who suffered from China’s retaliation to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.
• Many Americans grew weary of his lies: He lied about things that were obvious. He claimed that more people attended his inauguration than did President Obama’s in 2012. He claimed that he would have won the popular vote in 2016 were it not for illegal votes. Whenever asked about white supremacists or organizations who supported him he claimed to know nothing about them (e.g. David Dukes or the Proud Boys). Lying is always dicey but having to explain to your children that it’s not OK to lie when the President does makes for difficult conversations
• Democratic voters were too complacent in 2016 and vowed not to make that mistake again: Many of us never expected that our nation would elect Donald Trump. We scorned him during the Republican primary and expressed surprise that he won the nomination and we never expected he would beat Hilary Clinton. Enough Democrats didn’t bother to vote, falsely thinking their votes weren’t needed. Chastened by that experience they made certain it wouldn’t happen again
• COVID-19: This probably made the most difference. President Trump made a point of ignoring the wisdom of his predecessors and that included a playbook for a possible viral infection. The Obama administration successfully battled Ebola in 2014 and learned a great deal about global pandemics. Their hope to pass their wisdom to treat the next pandemic fell on deaf ears and when COVID-19 showed up on our shores the Trump administration had no plan. He attempted to blame the Chinese (hoping this would solve it), insisted that it won’t last long, and argued that wearing face masks were not necessary. Meanwhile thousands of Americans fell ill, died, or grieved loved ones who died. President Trump’s decision to ignore COVID convinced many Americans that he was no longer trustworthy to lead our nation.

Since his defeat in November he has shown himself to be far from a gracious loser. Two weeks ago we saw him ignite an assault on the US Capitol.

We can only hope that Americans from future generations learn the lessons of history and never again elect someone who has such disregard for our nation.

Last Wednesday the House of Representatives voted 217-192 to impeach President Trump for the second time, and according to the Constitution it now moves to the Senate to convict. While it only takes a majority of the House to impeach it takes a 2/3 vote of the Senate to convict and remove him from office.

While Presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump were impeached, none of them were convicted and removed from office. This may change soon.

I hope so.

President Trump’s allies argue that he has only a few days left in office and there is no point in removing someone from an office that he no longer holds.

On its face it does make some sense, but I argue that he still needs to be removed.

President Trump continues to claim that he won the 2020 election and has been robbed of a second term. He and his allies claim that voter fraud, uncounted ballots, and various other conspiracy theories cheated him of his reelection. While he hasn’t conceded defeat he has claimed he will run again in 2024. A conviction will ensure this won’t happen as he will be barred from running from another office.

More importantly, a conviction will send the message that nobody, even the President, is above the law. Our Founding Fathers wrote volumes (not only in the Constitution but also in the Federalist Papers) that they didn’t choose to overthrow King George III only to replace him with a homegrown tyrant. It’s often said that the mark of a true democracy isn’t the inauguration of the the first President but the inauguration of our second President. In other words the peaceful transition of power from one President to another makes us a true nation of, by, and for the people.

Since this happened for the first time in 1800 (when George Washington passed the mantle to John Adams) it hasn’t always been easy and several times a current President has been forced to watch his successor take the oath of office when he lost his bid for reelection.

But for the most part the outgoing President has shown graciousness and a respect for our nation. President Trump ended this. Not only has he refused to accept the will of the voters he has demanded that others break the law to keep him in office.

I hope we’re all aware of his threat to the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Republican) that if he didn’t “find” 11,780 votes he would face criminal charges. Fortunately Mr. Raffensperger didn’t take his threat seriously.

But on January 7th it became much, much more serious. On that day Congress was set to meet to accept the electoral votes and certify that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were properly elected as President and Vice President. We’re learning more about this each day but I think we can all agree that President Trump emboldened his supporters to march on the Capitol and, frankly, occupy it. Not only did they wish to stop the certification they intended to keep President Trump in office.

Four years ago the majority of us voted for Hillary Clinton to lead us. She won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote (much like President Bush in 2000). We were hurt, angry, and afraid but we accepted the results and prayed that President Trump would govern better than we feared.

He didn’t. By any standard he made us worse and I have no desire to list his failures. But nobody can argue that he was unprepared for COVID-19. He blamed China, he blamed the Democrats, he made fun of those who wore masks, and refused to listen to the smartest people in the room.

President Trump hoped to follow the fascist playbook: Find a way to power and declare that yourself president for life. He hoped to whip up the mob to prevent Congress from certifying the election. And then he planned to stay. He had no mechanism to have the vote certified for him. He also presented no evidence of voter fraud.

He wished to be Donald the First. Gratefully he didn’t succeed. Now we must ensure he can’t make another attempt.

We all knew that President Trump wouldn’t leave office easily or in a way that brings honor to our nation and traiditions. As a matter of fact I wrote about this last April.

In that post I feared that he would encourage his sycophants to surround the White House on January 20, 2021 to prevent his exit from the White House. I hadn’t thought Trump would encourage his minions to storm the U.S. Capitol on the day that they convened to accept the votes of the Electoral College.

It was a scary day and you can read a good timeline here. It began with a rally at the White House with President Trump telling the inciting the crowd to march to the Capitol. He promised to join them, but once the rally was over he returned to the White House.

We’ve seen the horrific scenes know that four people died and the Capitol was desecrated. The last time this happened was in 1814 and this was an invading force, not our own citizens.

The President’s actions are, simply put, sedition.

I doubt the President planned it, but he has taken no responsibility for it. After four years he still hasn’t learned that his words matter.

If there is a silver lining here, it’s this: we can pretty much ensure that President Trump won’t be able to call his people to action to surround the White House on January 20th.

It’s going to be a long 9 days.