Abstract
Abstract Donald Trump’s presidency produced a few legislative victories. Instead, as with his predecessors, the Trump presidency had to rely more on executive orders and other actions to move its agenda. But even this unilateral approach produced fewer results than his supporters hoped for or his detractors feared. This article will examine public policymaking and administration under the Trump Administration. It will argue that while the 2016 electoral victories for Republicans gave Donald Trump an enormous opportunity to move his political agenda, several factors prevented that from occurring. These factors include indecision on the part of the Trump presidency whether to move a policy agenda or cripple the administrative state; denial of personal responsibility for policies or actions, a failure to understand the constitutional underpinnings of American politics and policymaking, especially when it comes to administrative agency action; intra-party disputes; party polarization; ethical, legal, and impeachment issues; governmental inexperience; and an overall inability to appreciate the differences between the American presidency and business leadership. Overall, the article describes the political context of the Trump presidency and to explain how it, the structure of American government, and the overall indifference or failure of the Trump administration to understand how the government works rendered this presidency far less effective than it could have been. The lesson of the Trump presidency for the USA and other states is despite rhetoric and claims that outsiders or nontraditional leaders can affect governmental and policy change, they are often ineffectual or dangerous.
Highlights
By traditional measures, Donald Trump entered the US presidency as the least qualified person in history
The thesis is that Trump’s lack of government experience, along with his own personal style and refusal to come to grips with the reality of an American constitutional system with checks and balances and separation of powers, among other factors, largely rendered his presidency far less effective than his supporters hoped or foes feared
The Washington Post (Barbash and Paul 2019) pointed out that the Trump administration has lost 63 cases in court because of its failure to follow the basic rules of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and administrative law
Summary
Donald Trump entered the US presidency as the least qualified person in history. The thesis is that Trump’s lack of government experience, along with his own personal style and refusal to come to grips with the reality of an American constitutional system with checks and balances and separation of powers, among other factors, largely rendered his presidency far less effective than his supporters hoped or foes feared While it is common at least for recent presidents to promise government reform or have a philosophy for administrative reform (Schultz and Maranto 1998), Trump did not. While others have emphasized that the Trump administration was noted for its anti-government management style which sought to disable the executive branch (Goodsell 2019; Kassop 2020; Schier and Eberly 2017), it is more accurate to argue that the incompetence in the ability to use the administrative powers to accomplish policy goals came into conflict with the desire to disable the state. The conflict perhaps forever doomed the ability of the Trump administration to succeed along the dimensions it aspired to achieve
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