In 2016, Republicans went through the process of selecting a presidential candidate from a large field (17 candidates) that ultimately narrowed it down to Donald Trump. Now with the democrats forced to pick a challenger, it looks like they will have even more names than the GOP. Some estimates say the field will number more than 20 Democrats but realistically, you have to produce some creds to be taken seriously and most of the wannabes will fail to deliver; Vanity campaigns. Hoping to learn from the past, I compiled a file on past presidents to see if there were patterns that might lead to a winner in 2020.
It’s interesting to note who our presidents have been over the past sixty years and where they came from. John Kennedy was a first term Senator in 1960. Kennedy’s work life was almost entirely as an elected member of the congress both in the house and the senate. He was a first term senator from Massachusetts when he ran. Lyndon Johnson took over after Kennedy’s assassination and was elected to the job in 1964 but he was also a senator from Texas before teaming with Kennedy as his vice president. Lyndon Johnson spent most of his working life in the congress both in the house and the senate. He was a lawyer.
In 1968 Richard Nixon (a lawyer) was out of government but came back to win the presidency. His previous job had been Eisenhower’s vice president and before that he was in the congress from California. When he was driven out of office following his re-election in ’72, Jerry Ford filled in but failed to win election to his own term. Ford was also a lawyer and career politician.
Jimmy Carter was governor from Georgia and a relative unknown, but he came out of the sticks and beat Ford in 1976. Carter had been a farmer before election to governor. Carter was a graduate of the Naval Academy and spent a number of years serving in the Navy. Carter was not a lawyer.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won and was re-elected in 1984. Reagan had been governor of California previous to running for president. He was thought of as a weak candidate because of his actor back ground. In 1988 George Bush won the presidency after being Reagan’s vice president for eight years. He only served one term. Bush 41 was probably the best qualified candidate in modern times having been a successful business man in Texas before serving in the congress, as an ambassador and as director of the CIA. Neither Reagan or Bush 41 were lawyers.
In 1992 Bill Clinton was elected as governor of Arkansas. Other than being a lawyer by trade he spent his whole working life as an elected official in Arkansas. Clinton served two terms. Where Nixon resigned before he was impeached, Clinton stuck it out through the impeachment process but was not removed from office by the senate.
In 2000, George W Bush won the presidency as the governor of Texas. He served two terms. He spent eight years as governor of Texas but previous to that was an OIL MAN in the state. Bush 43 was not a lawyer.
In 2008, Barack Obama won a hard-fought battle to be the democrat nominee over Hillary Clinton then defeated John McCain for the presidency. Obama was a lawyer by trade whose work history described him as a neighborhood organizer. Other than that, he had never held a job until being elected to the Illinois State legislature. He was a first term Senator when he ran for president.
In 2016 businessman and political rookie Donald Trump defeated sixteen primary rivals and the vaunted Hillary Clinton to be president. He came directly to the highest office in the land from the business world. It wasn’t the first time in our country’s history that it happened, but in the modern era it was unheard of. More often than not, the candidates have been lawyers by trade. In my mind that is not a recommendation. Of the winners of the office in this review all but Carter, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 and Trump were lawyers. Is it any wonder our country is in the dire straits with so many lawyers in charge? Of the non-lawyers, all were Republicans except Carter.
So, in review, voters in America have been fed lawyers with little or no management experience running anything in the private sector to manage the largest enterprise in the world and we’re surprised it hasn’t thrived?
The success of a president is frequently impacted by the level of cooperation with the congress. If you have a president with a congress of the same party the outcome can be impressive because of the compatible ideology. A president with a split congress will be somewhat less successful because of the compromise required to work with the opposition party. The hardest time a president will have if the congress is wholly of the opposition party. That is hell in the world of politics.
Gauging the success of presidents needs to be viewed in the context of the congresses they worked with. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be successful if the congress is with you. It takes a master deal maker to accomplish anything if the congress is opposite. From a nuance perspective, the size of the political majority is also a factor.
If Trump is the deal maker he tells us he is, the next two years will be his biggest test. The clinker might be the determination of the opposition to prove him to be a loud-mouthed blow hard. Sadly, Trump’s style will not serve him when he in forced to work with people he has insulted time and time again. That might be a teaching moment for Trump. Insulting your rivals might bite you in the ass down the road.
Now moving forward to the looming campaign of 2020, the Democrats are jockeying for the run. It’s interesting to note the number of first term senators (like Obama) who view the time being right for another lawyer to run the country. It appears that lawyers will be the most numerous in the field this cycle as well.
Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and now Amy Klobuchar all lawyers, all career politicians. None of them have experience running a business or managing an organization larger than a campaign.
Bernie Sanders is a career politician but is not a lawyer. Interestingly, the Democrats allowed Sanders to run as a Democrat when he competed against Hillary Clinton even though he does not belong to the Democrat Party. It will be interesting in the next cycle to see if they allow an unaffiliated candidate to participate. Howard Schultz is thinking about running as an independent even though he has always identified as a democrat. How can Sanders run as a D if he’s never identified with the party?
I have to concede that Abe Lincoln was a lawyer, so I’m not completely turned off by them but the reason our country is in the difficulty we are is largely due to lawyers and insurance companies. And yet, we keep regurgitating lawyers as candidates.
Donald Trump has demonstrated that a guy with good business instincts can do good work leading the country so I don’t think we should eliminate business people from consideration. As a side consideration, for a business guy, being president calls for a cut in pay. For career politicians, election to the presidency is a step up in status and pay. It might be worthwhile to develop a cultivation program for business people as candidates so they can bring that experience to the job.
Finally, what we’ve learned from Trump is that our president does need a bedside manner. Our president needs to be the hard ass in private while being civil in public.
No Loss for Words 
North Korea vs Donald Trump Round Two!
by Steve DanaAs the President and his team head over to Viet Nam for the second Summit with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s important to reflect on where we’ve come from in what time period so moving forward we can see if Trump is the deal maker he suggests he is.
When Trump was elected, we had no dialog with Kim Jong Un. He was testing rockets and bombs. Americans were wringing their hands. The world was very uptight. Things were Not Good.
Trump came along and as is his way, he vowed to take on the challenge of taming the hermit kingdom. I don’t know whether anyone took Trump seriously since no president before him had ever made ANY PROGRESS with the Kims. Actually, nobody took Trump serious. Since the history of the Kim family dynasty was to take and never give, it would take a masterful deal maker to change history.
So, we are just two years into Trump’s presidency and we are heading out for the second summit with the DPRK. That’s a good thing in my mind.
It’s hard to say if we’ve made substantive progress in de-nuclearizing the Korean peninsula but we appear to be talking and not backing off on the sanctions. We have additional sanctions to apply if punitive action is warranted.
I am amused by the critics of the president who have a lot to say about how Trump should manage the negotiations and how he should apply more pressure or back off the pressure and how he should extract hard promises from Kim or how quickly the deed should be done before we declare the effort a failure.
What I would recommend to the smart asses in the congress and the press is to shut the hell up and let Trump negotiate with Kim. We were going nowhere before Trump arrived and we appear to be moving slowly forward so let the process proceed. If at the end of Trump’s first term we are still talking but don’t have a deal, we are making progress.
Pundits inside the government and out, have lots of opinions about how Trump should conduct the talks and for them the narrow definition of what success looks like. I’m willing to let Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo take as much time as they need to soften up the North Koreans and make their case for change in the DPRK. The process is not a sprint. If it takes five more years but ends with Kim giving up his nukes, I would call that success.
For many of those pundits who have offered opinions for years, Trump again is a threat because if he succeeds at any level, it will demonstrate that the pundits didn’t know their butts from a hole in the ground. That is the crux of the problem with Trump in this case and so many others.
We’ve been led to believe that problem after problem are un-repairable and Trump has systematically taken them on while applying different approaches to fixes and proved the champions of the status quo to be absolutely full of BS.
Humiliating the pundits is very dangerous for Trump because all the pundits offer is some level of expertise on a subject and when Trump demonstrates their ignorance, it creates even more hate. Threats against their livelihoods can cause desperate measures.
North Korea will not just roll over because Trump offers to talk. North Korea will need to see a clear benefit from the negotiations before they give up anything. Trump is using a long standing strategy in working with Asian cultures that place a high value on relationships. Trump is working on the relationships and that is a very good thing.
Hopefully, Kim will realize for himself the benefits of change for his country. Let’s hope for the sake of the North Korean people that he sees the light sooner rather than later.
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