Brent Orrell from American Enterprise Institute provides a lucid answer to the question. “Was the 4 years of T**** worth what little was gained.” (My question, not a quote from anyone else.)
“Points for effort but the books don’t balance. The price tag of the Trump presidency exceeds its value exponentially. The tax cuts, deregulation, judicial appointments, executive orders, and cultural counter-offensives (“he fights”) are trinkets compared to the way he has undermined the values and norms required to sustain the rule of law and the constitutional order. These shiny objects were used to distract, mollify, and provide justification for America’s closest brush with authoritarian government since 1789.”
I have posed this question here previously and the platitudes directed toward T**** wrt this have been weak, at best.
Look, SQUIRRELL!
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Well, to give Trump his due, for the past four years America was the land absent truth wherein everything heinous was possible.
LikeLiked by 5 people
The Trump regime was a close brush with tyranny. The culmination was the attempted autogolpe.
So in that sense, it might have been a wake up call to our own domestic forces that hate democratic principles of representative governance. They are the “dogs of war” that were released by a man consumed with the need for for power and ceaseless adulation.
The anti-government sectors scattered among us will always be there. Despite the overwhelming evidence that in a crisis a well coordinated, national effort is necessary, we were led by an AWOL president who literally tried to solve the worst dealt to us by ignoring it. Which was bad enough, but then he nurtured his base by dividing us at every opportunity. Like politicized mask wearing.
Really. Mask wearing?
Was it worth it? Possibly. National hubris took a back seat and bastardized our exceptionalism. Which is pushing us to relearn and appreciate what we had and will, by the grace of Gods, have again.
IMHO
LikeLiked by 4 people
Worth it? Maybe.
The young and new America may have been woken up to the need for their involvement and leadership.
LikeLiked by 3 people
First thing, you have to compare to the alternative.
What if Hillary had won?
First of all, we would have lost the Constitution forever, with our courts packed with outcome oriented judges dedicated to validating the whim of the mob.
We would not be the largest producer of energy in the world.
Our median income would be $8000 lower.
We would still be 3 years from a coronavirus vaccine.
We would have one or more new wars to add to our overseas involvements.
For all former President Trumps annoying personal failures, simply not being Hillary is a magnificent accomplishment.
LikeLike
Your anti-Hillary rant was expected. But you cannot know that that would be the case. So it is solely speculation on your part based on you self-proclaimed hatred for all things Democratic. Nothing based in fact, which is now passé as of Noon today.
As far as The Constitution goes; the man in Florida did a pretty good job of attempting to shred it. And ignored it more often than defended it.
…”not being Hillary is a magnificent accomplishment.” Your hatred is again noted and discarded with the same disdain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am basing my claims on what she promised to do in her campaign.
Had she been elected, our only chance would have been that she was lying.
LikeLike
“For all former President Trumps annoying personal failures, simply not being Hillary is a magnificent accomplishment.”
Awww … still bitter that trump couldn’t get Pence to attempt to THROW the election for him, I see. Boo Hoo.
Hillary lost an election. Gee, that’s never happened before.
Your fellow got thousands of people to storm our country’s Capitol, vandalize it, steal government items from inside and LITERALLY use it as an out-house. It takes a particular type of know-nothing to go that low. I guess you could say they left donald’s calling card.
Yeah, I voted for Secretary Clinton. I’d do it again. I like intelligent people.
Only a total imbecile would vote, support or defend Trump.
Thank goodness enough decent people saw the egotistical self-proclaimed ‘grabber’ for the unfit guy he is.
He lost the election.
Too bad he was raised by wolves and can’t accept being told “NO.”
Hillary knew how to act like an adult. She made the concession call, gave the concession speech and attended his Inauguration.
LikeLiked by 3 people
We were supposed to have new roads and a “paid for by Mexico” wall. Best health insurance in the world. Cheaper too.
Dreamers were to be taken care of. And they were after a fashion.
Debt? Gone. Sure, gone through the roof.
Stock buybacks? GDP? Looming middle class tax hikes?
Trade deficit? Whew…still higher and with broken farmers on welfare.
At least the path of economic recovery continued and with wage hikes that were expected as the employment trends also continued.
Promises did not include the pandemic crisis, of course. That came later. As in “be gone by summer” .
Clinton could not possibly top that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“First thing, you have to compare to the alternative.“
No, actually you don’t (well maybe you do for personal reasons).
Remember what I said about “hate”….
LikeLiked by 1 person
While it is true I don’t like Hillary, I am basing my statement on what she promised to do and promised not to do.
LikeLike
Rather than what she did?
Your peek is based on what “may” have happened “if”?
Dude, really??
LikeLiked by 3 people
Well, since she wasn’t elected we can judge on what she did, but we can judge by what she said she would do and what she did as Sect of State, which was to be the most avid warmonger since LBJ.
LikeLike
Well, if you’re going to drop the LBJ card I’d have to point out that Churchill and FDR both wore the mantel with pride as they stood up to fascism in their day.
Yes, the former President used the term, but like virtually ALL of his pronouncements was ignorantly inaccurate.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Your fantasies of what a Clinton Presidency would have been like are pure unadulterated nonsense and/or extremist partisan spin.
For obvious starters, the Constitution would now be in better shape without Trump and his mob and his hack judges chipping away at it. There is a reason that Trump removed the ABA from the process of vetting judges – he put their activist ideological bent ahead of their competence.
Three years delay on the vaccines? The coronavirus vaccines were developed in other countries. Trump had literally nothing to do with it and neither would a President Clinton. See what I mean? Nonsense.
LikeLike
Rewriting history awfully soon, aren’t you?
LikeLike
I have no idea what you are trying to say. What am I supposedly rewriting? But I will say that your “alternative history” of the Hillary Clinton administration is pretty much as I characterized it – nonsense.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Rewriting history”…
How on Earth can you rewrite a history that NEVER happened?
LikeLiked by 1 person
English lesson first. Your question should have started with “were” the last 4 years, not “was”. To answer, of course it was worth it to increase household income through tax cuts, the lowest unemployment, the highest DOW, higher security at the borders, denial of a free lunch to leeches from the south, holding other nations to their agreements, returning troops from the Mideast, taking on China and the list goes on and on. Not a likeable personality but policy wise, Trump was spot on. Of course an unexpected emergency put a damper in more progress but not of Trump’s doing. Now we have a pathetic socialist begging for world acceptance and approval of weakness…and the world will gladly oblige…at our expense.
LikeLike
Your anti-liberal rant basically shows how blinded you have been tot he past 4 years.
The piece I posted talks about the positives of the T**** administration. However, it is about what it has cost US as a country.
Your hatred for all things Liberal, and that of many others, is the reason the Biden administration will have to work doubly hard FOR the people and the country. The narcicist who just abandoned his post left him quite the mess, and not all of it COVID related.
And your grammatical lesson is noted. However, having checked with an English teacher, in this context, the use of “was” is suitable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Anti-liberal” ?
I’d describe it as anti-intellectual….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same thing, isn’t it?
LikeLike
Was is for a single year, were is for multiple years.
LikeLike
Was is for a single presidential term, which consists of four years (And Thank G-d for that this time!)
LikeLiked by 1 person