Donald Trump has already started his campaign for a second term. However, many people in the reality-based world–including yours truly–think Trump is on a double-time march toward being a one-term wonder. Well, one of the nation’s most respected presidential historians is of that same mind. She thinks that unless Trump reins in his now-infamous temper, his presidency will go down in flames.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of four books on the presidency. Her book about Abraham Lincoln, “Team of Rivals,” was known to be one of Barack Obama’s favorites. On Thursday’s edition of “Morning Joe,’ Goodwin joined a panel discussion about Rich Lowry’s recent article in Politico about Trump’s inability to put his populism into practice. Raw Story got a clip.
Goodwin mused that contrary to what Trump would have us believe, he hasn’t “taken control of the agenda in any way.” She believes that Trump’s incessant tweeting has denied him the “bully pulpit” he talked about so much on the campaign trail.
Trump sees his 140-character rants as a way of bypassing the gatekeepers and talking directly to his followers. However, Goodwin believes his tweeting “changes the oxygen from what he’s supposed to be saying,” and keeps us from knowing what he really cares about.
Goodwin has written about Lyndon Johnson–under whom she served as a White House Fellow–as well as Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. She believes that if any of them were around today, they would not be too pleased with Trump’s rage tweets. They would have suggested that Trump get “a fake tweet account” to use for those rants.
She recalled how FDR drafted speeches that would turn the paper brown–only to have his speechwriters edit them out. However, they gave FDR an outlet to vent. She believes that Trump needs to find a similar way to vent.
“That anger has to be taken out and go somewhere, or it’s going to blow up the presidency.”
That, of course, assumes that his rants don’t wind up getting something or someone blown up first.
(featured image courtesy LBJ Library Flickr feed, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
