I have been asked to grade President Trump’s first 100 days as president. Most such assessments are the opposite of analysis. They take a gut feeling and back analysis out of it.
What criteria should I use in making my evaluation and how should I weight them? The criteria that occur to me immediately are foreign policy, domestic policy, managing the transition, unifying the country, more or less in order of weight.
What else should I take into account? And what should their relative weights be?
What is the president’s moral vision? What is his philosophy of governance? Who is President Trump in comparison to candidate Trump?
At the least, you should measure real accomplishments. He has these big signings of items with grandiose names, then when I read the details, nothing is really happening or has changed. His one big accomplishment is what I think any other GOP POTUS would have done, i.e. get the youngest conservative on the court possible. TBH, I don’t see how you can give him anything other than an incomplete.
That said, as part of your grading I would suggest you give two separate grades. One on how you think his base perceives him, and then one for everybody else.
Steve
I think that’s right to the extent that there are two drastically different points of view out there. For a considerable proportion of his base simply not being Hillary Clinton is a sufficient accomplishment to hold their support.
I’m not much interested in trying to put words in other people’s mouths. The only evaluation I can provide is my own.
What would it take for Trump supporters to back off in their support? I think that he could pretty easily go 4 years claiming that the Democrats won’t let him do stuff and/or blame it on extremists in his own party.
Steve
What I think is unappreciated (particularly on the part of Democrats) is that Trump is the anti-establishment candidate. He was running against the leadership of both parties. That’s no foundation for legislative achievement but it could result in his being re-elected.
Yes Dave, but he is governing like a pretty conventional Republican. Cutting taxes, increasing our ME involvement, making it harder to get health care, etc.
Steve
None of those things have happened. Might they? Sure.
But Trump is purely transactional. What will actually happen is anybody’s guess.
Make no mistake. While I think that the only fair grade at this point is “Incomplete”, if you must give a letter grade I fail to see how he could be graded higher than D.
It’s too early for me to be contemplating the reelection odds of Trump. In fact, IMO, he may be lucky to make it through the first term unharmed!