Headline: Donald Trump’s stamp on history is greater than his flailing implies

Sub-headline: The furore over the border wall distracts from the president’s effectiveness elsewhere

Two paragraphs of Mr. Ganesh’s essay nearly leapt off the page, for me. The first under consideration voices the notion :  ‘this is the most consequential administration since the end of the cold war.’ If anything is apparent it is that a Sunday Supplement stylist does not make a political writer/commentator.  The fact that Trump had McConnell and Ryan to enact their shared Robber Capital agenda – because Trump is just the Front Man , the Idea Man !

All the same, historians must beware recency bias when assessing the president. The non-materialisation of the wall is embarrassing for Mr Trump. It might even cost him re-election. The mistake is to see it as proof of general presidential weakness. If only. In ways domestic and foreign, this is the most consequential administration since the end of the cold war.

But Mr. Ganesh, so as not to appear as too blatant an apologist for the Economic Agenda authored by the Dixiecrat McConnell and the re-closeted Randian Ryan, political/economic Neanderthals, he engages in the time honored CYA!

None of which is actually to praise the substance of his foreign or domestic reforms. Some of us were happy with the world of 2016, thanks, and still hope the west will return to that status quo ante. No, this is about the scale, not the wisdom, of Mr Trump’s doings. He is a more historic president than his present flailing suggests. And he can “achieve” more, even after his loss of the House of Representatives. Deregulation is often a matter of executive fiat. Judicial and bureaucratic nominees are confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans have a majority. As for foreign policy, the constitution gifts him wide powers. We need not picture what an effectual populist would be like. We are living under one. Imagine his historical weight at the four-year mark.

Have I engaged in self-serving reductivism? No less so than Mr. Ganesh!

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/e534296c-1366-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e