List of Congressional Accomplishments 2017-21 Actually Reflects Well on Lawmakers and Paints Trump As a Liberal
He doesn't seem to want his supporters to know
For all the apocalyptic language from Donald Trump’s adversaries about how much damage he did to the republic, he actually accomplished very little in terms of landmark legislation pushed through Congress. Yet the legislative branch of government was quite productive during his tenure 2017-2021 in reaching bipartisan consensus, and he mostly quietly signed things they passed. He didn’t trumpet these things, however, apparently out of fear that his supporters would view him as a liberal.
He oversaw Operation Warp Speed to develop a covid vaccine, but then paradoxically encouraged anti-vaxxers. He followed scientific advice in ordering covid restrictions, and protection of the public with closed schools, remote learning, closed businesses, and closed government offices. Trillion-dollar payouts began under his administration, with the voting approval of most Republican members of Congress. And yet the far right seems to give him and him a pass.
His legislative priorities were mostly failures, as Philip Bump explained in The Washington Post, Evaluating the 10 Laws Trump Said He Would Pass in His First 100 Days pointed out that only two of his major legislative priorities were even partially successful. “On Oct. 22, 2016, Trump unveiled his “Contract with the American Voter,” a list of 60 promises meant to persuade voters to back his candidacy.”
Of those, he partially achieved #1 and #9, Bump reported. No progress was made on the other top 10 priorities.
His most substantive accomplishment was appointing three conservatives to the Supreme Court, and many to lower courts. His three justices subsequently joined other justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending a woman’s national right to choose abortion. Over time, they may impose a conservative judicial philosophy on the nation for a generation, though justices are supposed to be above politics.
That said, Congress between 2017 and 2021 did have significant accomplishments. The American political system is not nearly as broken as widely perceived.
I might ask why aren’t these legislative accomplishments more widely known? Maybe because congressional compromise doesn’t fit neatly into the rigid left-right paradigms, in the agenda of hyper-partisan broadcast outlets like Fox News and MSNBC. Social media that play to each party’s base depend on viral outrage. Neither conservatives nor liberals want to think of Trump as progressive in any way, shape, or form.
This is like learning that historians now consider Richard Nixon’s legislative accomplishments somewhat liberal, more so than those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
In mainstream media coverage, Trump’s tweets, sensationalist sound-bites, chaotic governing style, disillusioned advisors, authoritarian actions, and threats over-shadowed dispassionate policy analysis.
This particular list of pro-Trump facts and cherry-picked information, posted on Facebook by “Conservative American,” actually, as NYT editorial writer Farah Stockman pointed out, “paints Mr. Trump as a liberal.”
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