The Trump Era: Reflections

Was PAW really not able to find at least one “reflection” on Trump’s victory that reflected positively on the millions who elected Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate (“The Trump Era: Reflections,” March 1)? Do the uniformly anti-Trump perspectives of four of the five reflections (the fifth was largely a neutral data analysis) imply that today’s Princeton students are sequestered in a monolithic edifice of opinion and are not challenged to think critically outside conventional liberal wisdom? Please tell me it’s not so ...

The March 1 issue of PAW was probably the most engaging one I’ve received over my 10 years as an alum. I realize it’s difficult to play on such mega-topics all the time (nor is that PAW’s goal), but I thought I’d let you know that all of the contributors wrote stellar pieces. It’s refreshing to read these opinions from a publication with no profit motive. Bravo.

I don’t recall hearing Donald Trump refer to himself as a “populist.” Rather, identification of Trump as a “populist” represents a “tag” assigned by another, in this case Professor Müller. As a #populist, Trump becomes open to demonization, as demonstrated by Professor Müller’s litany of evil behaviors one should expect from a #populist.

My Princeton education stressed balanced analysis from which we could draw a conclusion (hopefully well reasoned). Unfortunately, Professor Müller’s article contains a string of conclusions with little serious supporting analysis. In 1960, this paper would have received 5+ or, at best, 4-.

The views from Princeton of Donald Trump and his election are interesting, but most of them generally repeat the sorts of observations we’ve been getting in the press and other media for some time. As a historian (not of the United States) and certainly no student of American politics, I wish that someone better schooled than I would try to answer the broader question: How do we explain the massive failure of the American political system that led to the election of 2016?

Here we had a long, painful, and expensive campaign lasting at least two years, yet which ultimately gave birth to a couple of candidates who, rightly or wrongly, many saw as among the most disliked and distrusted people on the political scene. What explains this extraordinary breakdown of our much-vaunted political system? Party structures and party leaderships? Citizens United? Inside the Beltway politics? Identity politics, Democratic and Republican both? Something else?

Perhaps others have engaged the question, and I’m just reading the wrong stuff. Or perhaps the nasty little secret is that the current occupant of the White House (when he can get away from Fifth Avenue and Palm Beach) has been a windfall for our analysts and opinion-makers in the media and elsewhere. A twittering mass of insecurities, he’s become the gift that keeps on giving, and our pundits are perhaps loath to interfere. (At my age, my first vote was cast for Adlai Stevenson ’22, and sometimes it seems that it’s all been downhill from there!)

Re “The Trump Era”: The printer must have goofed. Surely your copy read “The Trump Error.”