Noah Smith at Noahpinion:
Regular Noahpinion readers will know that I’m not very excited about a second Trump term. I don’t think the next four years are going to be hell on Earth or that they’ll lead to the collapse of the nation, but I do think Trump is probably going to degrade our institutions, foment chaos, appease our enemies overseas, and appoint a lot of very unqualified people.
BUT, I also do have to admit that Trump’s first term turned out much better than I expected! Trump did foment social and political chaos, but consider the following:
- The economy demonstrated strong growth, with workers at the bottom of the distribution reaping especially large wage gains.
- Thanks to Trump’s rhetoric, the U.S. belatedly woke up to the various threats posed by China, and realized that unilateral free trade has many drawbacks.
- Trump did not lock Hillary Clinton up, or persecute his political enemies in general.
- Trump did great on Covid relief spending, carrying American households through the pandemic and propelling a rapid economic recovery after the pandemic.
- Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was the best Covid vaccine development effort in the world, creating new and highly effective vaccines in a very short period of time, and saving a very large number of lives.
- Very few U.S. government institutions suffered long-lasting damage as a result of Trump.
That’s not the best-case scenario for how Trump’s first term could have turned out, but it’s very far from the worst. All in all, if you told me in November 2016 that this is how Trump’s term would go, I would have breathed a sigh of relief (well, except for learning that we were going to have a giant pandemic, but that was hardly Trump’s fault).
More here.
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