Trump, the Recycling President with No New Ideas, Only Old Bad Ones
Trump can be accused of many things but being a visionary is not one.
He is rather a recycler as most of his grandiose plans have been proposed unsuccessfully in the past, from his call for sky high tariffs, to his demand that Panama relinquish the Panama Canal to his dream of buying Greenland to renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
Even calls for trump’s face to be chiseled into Mount Rushmore are not new, with past lobbying for adding everyone from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama to the pantheon of legendary American leaders.
Trump also went off the very deep end when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Jimmy Buffett tweeted a better idea from heaven, “The Gulf of Margaritaville.”
Trump won the popular vote for president with a margin of less than 1.5 percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris. Nineteen presidential elections yielded true landslide victories of 10 points or more, leaving trump in its dust. Landslide? Not by a long shot.
Trump’s hero is the underperforming 25th president, William McKinley, who had the misfortune of being assassinated in 1901, early in his second term.
In terms of presidential greatness, McKinley ranks no higher than 14th in 16 polls, starting in 1948. Pollsters have ranked trump’s first time around among the bottom feeders, along with such forgettable presidents as Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.
Trump plans to send America to a new “golden age” but his idea is more like the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries known as the Gilded Age, when robber barons and industrialists built great fortunes on the backs of the increasingly unequal workers.
Trump may have more in common with three other presidents.
James K. Polk, the 11th president, campaigned on promises to gain territory from both Mexico and the United Kingdom. Under his rule as president, the U.S. annexed Texas, went to war with Mexico and threatened war with England.
President Andrew Johnson was a poor replacement after President Lincoln was murdered. He rejected calls for strict loyalty oaths from the recently defeated South but did demand loyalty from his cabinet. He fired his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton on Feb. 21, 1868, in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, which required the consent of the Senate before removal of a cabinet officer. The action and Johnson’s inability to heal the national and political divides, led to a failed impeachment.
Both trump and President Ronald Reagan were master con artists and both were skillful in keeping their names in the headlines of the day. And like trump, Regan extensively delegated and gave extensive authority to his underlings.
Trump has been a proponent of trade tariffs and has claimed that raising tariffs will not only bring in added revenues but it also will help domestic manufacturers to compete with foreign companies. If the past is any sign, tariffs will not only not work, they will spell the defeat of Republicans.
In calling for sky high tariffs, trump has frequently referred to McKinley who also was a strong advocate of protective tariffs.
McKinley gained national note as a congressman when he championed of protectionism and co-sponsored the Tariff Act of 1890. Also known as the McKinley Tariff, it became law on October 1, 1890. The tariff raised the average duty on imports to almost 50 percent and represented protectionism, a policy that was backed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats.
The tariff caused prices to rise steeply and voters took note. In the 1890 election, Republicans lost their majority in the House and in the 1892 presidential election, President Benjamin Harrison was soundly defeated by Democrat Grover Cleveland. The Senate, House, and Presidency were then all under Democratic control.
The 1890 tariff was also not appreciated abroad. Protectionists in Great Britan argued for tariff retaliation and imperial trade preference.
Upon Cleveland’s victory, the Democrats immediately started drafting new tariff legislation, and in 1894, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff passed, which lowered U.S. tariff averages.
Trump has channeled McKinley in campaigning for no more foreign wars. But trump’s words are hardly peaceful while McKinley led the country into its first foreign war and the beginning of a history of U.S. imperialism around the world.
McKinley was president in 1898, the start of the Spanish-American War, which was triggered by the ongoing Cuban struggle for independence from Spain. American public opinion favored Cuban freedom, a view with McKinley shared. Riots in Havana led McKinley to send the battleship USS Maine. On February 15, the Maine exploded and sank with 266 men killed. Many blamed Spain for the sabotage although it was later proven that the blast was accidental.
Two months later, the U.S. declared war on Spain. The war ended with the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which gave U.S. temporary control over Cuba and ownership of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
During the war, McKinley also pushed to annex the Republic of Hawaii in 1898 after the Queen was overthrown in 1893. There was strong American support for annexation, and the need for Pacific naval bases and Hawaii became American.
Trump reacted with indifference to racial violence and so did McKinley. Trump refused to condemn white racists who led a violent rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., in which one anti-racist demonstrator was killed. In 1897, Black postmasters were assaulted in Hogansville, Ga., in 1897, and at Lake City, S.C., the following year. McKinley would not condemn the violence.
A group of white supremacists violently overthrew the elected government of Wilmington, N.C., on November 10, 1898, an event known as the Wilmington insurrection of 1898. McKinley refused requests by Black leaders to send in federal troops to protect Black citizens and refused residents’ appeals for help to recover from the widespread destruction of the predominantly Black neighborhood of Brooklyn.
After McKinley was assassinated, his name was placed on streets, civic organizations and libraries in more than a dozen states. In 1896, the tallest mountain in North America, known as Denali, was informally renamed Mount McKinley. At his inauguration, trump issued an executive order to restore McKinley’s name to the mountain to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” One more trumpian lie.
The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million and in the late 19th century, prospectors rushed toward Alaska in search of gold. One prospector, William Dickey, was so happy by the recent nomination of McKinley for president that he called the Alaska mountain “Mount McKinley.” The name stuck and became official in 1917.
In 2015, the Obama administration respected the native American legacy of Alaska and officially renamed the peak Denali, a name that originated from Alaska’s Athabascan people, translating roughly to “The Great One.”
Mount Rushmore
Nutty Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., has led the charge to have trump’s face chiseled into Mount Rushmore in Keystone, S.D., next to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, the greatest presidents in the nation’s history. But it won’t happen.
“Let’s get carving!” said Luna, who introduced legislation to put trump in stone for eternity to recognize what she called trump’s “remarkable accomplishments” and “the success he will continue to deliver.”
Adding presidents to Mount Rushmore has been a topic over the years but the National Park Service has rejected any additions to the iconic memorial. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, died in 1941 and the service said there is no one with the same kind of expertise to expand the memorial. Borglum wanted to plant Jefferson’s mug on a large area to the right of Washington. But the area was found unstable so Jefferson was squeezed between Washington and Roosevelt.
In 1937, while the work was in progress, a bill to add women’s right activist Susan B. Anthony to the monument failed. After he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, some suggested memorializing John F. Kennedy. The likeness of Ronald Reagan to be placed on Rushmore was first mentioned in 1985 at the start of his second term but it went nowhere. Likewise for stone renderings of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama was at Mount Rushmore on May 30, 2008, when he was asked if he would want to be immortalized in stone. He dismissed the idea because, “I don’t think my ears would make it. There’s only so much rock up there.”
Panama Canal
As far as taking back the Panama Canal, it’s never been tried, and for good reason: The U.S. signed an ironclad agreement giving up ownership of the canal to Panama in 1977.
The United States recognized the Republic of Panama on November 6, 1903, and U.S. signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty which granted the United States exclusive and permanent possession of the Panama Canal Zone. In exchange, Panama received $10 million and an annuity of $250,000 beginning nine years later. Almost immediately, the treaty was condemned by many Panamanians as an infringement on their country’s new national sovereignty.
Construction began in 1909 on the 40-mile long canal and the nearly $400 million project was inaugurated on August 15, 1914, with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.
The U.S. gave up the Panama Canal in 1999 after nearly 20 years of Panamanian protest and resentment over the U.S. presence and influence in the Canal Zone. The agreement replaced the original 1903 agreement that granted the U.S. perpetual control of the canal. It was signed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and Panama’s General Omar Torrijos.
On September 7, 1977, Carter signed the Neutrality Treaty with Torrijos, which guaranteed the permanent neutrality of the canal and gave the United States the right to use military force, if necessary, to keep the canal open. The treaty was the rationale for America’s 1989 invasion of Panama to overthrow Panamanian military dictator Manuel Noriega who have been indicted in the U.S. on drug charges and had threatened to seize control of the canal. The invasion, ordered by President George H.W. Bush, lasted less t han two weeks, ending on January 3, 1990.
Democratic rule was restored in Panama in the 1990s, and at noon on December 31, 1999, the canal was peacefully turned over to Panama.
Trump’s expansionist plans are very American. The U.S. acquired much of its territory by buying it, like the Louisiana Purchase. Others attempted expansion are less known, as when Secretary of War Jefferson Davis pressed unsuccessfully for the purchase of enough of northern Mexico to support the construction of a Southern transcontinental railway.
There would be plenty of precedent if trump did order a military invasion of Panama, usually in the name of manifest destiny and racism.
The Monroe Doctrine , enacted in 1823 to stop further European colonialism in Latin America, resulted in the Mexican-American War of 1846 when the U.S. seized 525,000 square miles of Mexican territory.
The California genocide began after the U.S. took control of California after the Mexican–American War. The American takeover triggered an influx of American settlers to the region as a result of the California gold rush. Between 1846 and 1873, settlers killed between 9,492 and 16,094 indigenous Californians; up to several thousand were also starved or worked to death. Forced labor, kidnapping, rape, child separation and forced displacement were widespread during the genocide, and were encouraged, tolerated, and even carried out by American officials and military commanders.
The bloodiest example of American expansion involved expansion of the territories for American colonists at the costs of thousands of Native Americans. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 culminated in the deportation of 60,000 Native Americans in an event known as the Trail of Tears, where up to 16,700 people died in an act of ethnic cleansing.
Greenland
Trump is apparently unaware that Greenland is already an unofficial part of the United States. During World War II, the Nazis occupied continental Denmark, leaving Denmark’s other two territories, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, exposed to a potential invasion. In response, England occupied the Faroe Islands, and along with Canada, made plans to occupy parts of Greenland, which would have pulled the otherwise neutral island into the conflict.
The U.S. entered World War II in December 1941 and took over protection of Greenland’s valuable mine of cryolite, a key ingredient of aluminum. A U.S. air base was established and thousands of American servicemen arrived on the island. Denmark was liberated in May 1945, and the U.S. returned political control of the island to Copenhagen. The American military presence continued and the 1940 agreement was expanded in 1951 after Denmark became a founding member of NATO.
During the Cold War, the U.S. operated two main bases on Greenland: Sondre Stromfjord in the south, and Thule in the far north. The latter was a major Strategic Air Command base. Greenland also accommodated part of the North American Defense Command’s Distant Early Warning Line (DEW), the series of radar stations around the Arctic Circle established in the late 1950s to detect incoming bombers from the Soviet Union.
The Air Force pulled out of Sondre Stromfjord in the 1990s, but retained its base at Thule. The Danish government has never put a limit on the number of troops Washington can station there and several hundred American troops remain.
Trump covets the world’s largest island to project American power and for the island’s rich mineral resources that are needed for advances in U.S. technology. Imperialism by any other name smells just as stinky.
Trump said that Denmark would eventually “ come along ” with the potential sale of the planet’s largest island. Greenland and Denmark have quickly put the kibosh on trump’s interests.
“We don’t want to be Danes,” Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede said. “We don’t even want to be Americans. We want to be Greenlanders.”
This week, Denmark announced that it would bolster defense spending for the Arctic island of Greenland with a $2 billion security package that contains long-range drones and new Arctic ships.
Greenland is still technically a Danish possession although the island and its roughly 50,000 people were granted self-rule in 2009.
American suggestions that Greenland become part of the U.S. have been floated three times, and flat out rejected each time, starting 150 years ago.
The first time the subject came under serious discussion was during the administration of President Andrew Johnson. Secretary of State William Seward, a Lincoln holdover, used Johnson’s distraction over Reconstruction to pursue his longstanding goals of territorial expansion.
Seward pressed to take Canada from the British Empire and to buy or lease a naval base in the Caribbean. His policy led to the Alaska Purchase for $7.2 million, a plan known as “Seward’s Folly.” The Russian Empire sold Alaska as it sought to sell underperforming assets. Seward also wanted the U.S. to buy Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, which then owned both.
As a senator, Robert J. Walker, vigorously supported the annexation of Texas. As Secretary of the Treasury, he held responsibility for the management of funds relating to the Mexican–American War. Walker later was a presidential advisor and encouraged absorption of Greenland.
Walker’s grand plan was to entice Canada to join the U.S. after it became sandwiched between a newly purchased Alaska on the west and Greenland on the eastern coast. U.S. hopes to take Greenland evaporated after a report by Walker was leaked to a lawmaker who revealed the plans on the House floor while arguing against the acquisition of funds for Alaska.
Denmark had a history of selling territory, including islands, to Washington but. But Greenland has never been for sale. The U.S. secretly offered Denmark $100 million in gold bars for the island, which they deemed “a military necessity” in 1946, but the offer was rejected.
The second attempt came in the aftermath of the second world war. Denmark administered Greenland before the Danes were conquered by the Nazis in six hours in March 1940. Annexation plans were dropped when a year later, the Danish ambassador in exile signed an agreement allowing the U.S. government to occupy and fortify the island.
The possibility of buying Greenland was the subject of a February 1946 Gallup poll when a third of Americans supported the idea even though only 45 percent of respondents even knew where Greenland was.
Most recently, President Harry Truman’s secretary of war, Robert Patterson, said that securing Greenland up to the extent of purchasing it outright, was a “good idea.” The Danes were taken by complete surprise by the proposal and the matter was rejected, although the U.S. was granted extensive rights to the island.
Gilded Age
Trump is not a student of history and while he promised to lead the nation to a new “golden age” his plans are more like the Gilded Age of America, a time of materialistic excesses and widespread political corruption. The Gilded Age was a time of economic growth but it also was an era of poverty and inequality, as millions of immigrants poured into the United States, and the high concentration of wealth became more visible and contentious.
The titans of industry like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan made fortunes at the expense of the working class and with the approval of leaders in Washington.
Political corruption was rampant, as business leaders spent significant amounts of money ensuring that government did not regulate the activities of big business.
Gulf of America
Now for trump’s really important order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in order to bring back a glowing pride in the nation’s imperialistic, racist roots.
The Gulf of Mexico was formed 300 millions years ago and was first named on a Mercator navigational map in 1569.