As I was watching The West Wing on Netflix for the umpteenth time, something clicked in my brain and it made me view the presidency of Donald Trump in a new light. Before I get into what sparked my musings, let me explain what happened to make me view Trump in a new light.
In the 100th episode of The West Wing, former President Bill Clinton and various real-life West Wing officials come onto the show and talk about their experiences in the White House and Clinton talked about how each president who comes to the White House is shaped by the previous presidents and has to carve his own legacy. This is where I had my “aha” moment. What if we were looking at Trump in the wrong way?
Each and every president, regardless of party, have left their own mark in this country, and have molded what the United States is now. From when Washington to James Madison fought in the American Revolution, wrote the Bill of Rights, crafted the Preamble and wrote the Declaration of Independence, founded the United States of America, and wrote the United States Constitution.
Andrew Johnson, who was considered the “man of the people,” committed grave acts of injustice against the Cherokee Natives, James Buchanan could have stopped the Civil War from even occurring.
Abraham “Honest Abe” Lincoln... Lincoln, whom Republicans and Democrats exhale as a great president for getting us into the Civil War on the principle that slavery was wrong to lose half the country to win the Civil War and abolish slavery. Wilson Woodrow skillfully navigated the US through WWI, enacted the League of Nations, having the infamous Fourteen Points Plan, AND arguing against the Treaty of Versailles, knowing Germany would retaliate.
Herbert Hoover from humble beginnings and yet crashing us into the beginning of the Great Depression. Then we have Franklin Delano Roosevelt who not only made history by being the only three-term president, practically eradicated polio, enacted various government-funded programs to give aid and relief to the impoverished to skillfully navigating us through WWII.
Moving forward to JFK and Lyndon B. Johnson, both exalted for the Civil Rights Acts, leading this country through a myriad of social changes the United States desperately needed. Richard Nixon’s legacy of the EPA, lowering the voting age and other great things, and yet he’s remembered for the Watergate Scandal. The scandal that gripped the country and his successor was doomed to a flawed presidency. From Carter’s mistake in Iran to Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal which should have been the end of his presidency and yet he persevered.
Bringing us to George W. Bush, whose administration brought us one of the most deathly terror attacks this country has seen- 9/11 to a war that we are still paying for in 2017. In 2008, President Barak Obama made history.
He was the nation's FIRST black President. When you think of how African Americans have come from boarding off ships in chains to be sold into slavery to gaining their rights and then to have a black president?! If that were not enough, he made sure that people were protected under DACA and DAPA, Gay Marriage was legalized, navigated his presidency with grace and dignity while Congress was unabashedly racist towards him? Say what you want, Obama had class.
Then we get to the current president, Donald Trump. Americans have known who the Trumps were. Real Estate moguls to reality stars to now the First Family. He has never been shy about his opinions. In fact, he has let them known to the public. People either love him or hate him for what he stands for.
And yet… Clinton’s words on the West Wing haunt me. There is no denying how divisive Trump is. However, what if the weight of the presidency is what really weighing on him. The Oval Office has seen many presidents come and go. It holds the secrets of past presidents. Their legacies, for better or worse, shaped them. What if Trump is simply grappling with what the presidency really means? Can it not be so that the weight of the country, its people and the eyes of our allies and foes are getting to him?
From Washington, who was the first president to Andrew Jackson, probably the worst of the lot, to Barak Obama who had the audacity to make history repeatedly.
Donald Trump has a lot to live up to. It is up to the American people, as always, to hold our public servants accountable for their actions. This is what Trump has been dealing with since he declared his candidacy in 2015. He is no stranger to conflict and controversy. It’s no secret that Trump was shocked as any of us when the results of the Election of 2016 declared him as the president.
Everyone dreams of becoming the president someday. Few people achieve it.
Those who do, either rise or fall due to the demands of the presidency. History will tell us someday what kind of President was in a few years’ time. As the running theme from Hamilton suggests, “History has its eyes on you.” History has had its eyes on our public servants from Washington to Trump. “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
Again, another theme from Hamilton. While we try to write our own story and tell it from our point of view, we are only remembered through others’ eyes. How will Trump be remembered? Will he rise to the occasion when his country is, loudly, beseeching him to do so? Or, like Burr, will he be another flawed villain in history?
