One thing I do worry about in a post Trump USA, and this is heavily influenced by how long he is in office, how far will the goalposts for a good president be moved and will we manage to move them back to where they should be or will people settle?

Well, we really haven’t had a good president this century. Bush showed some horrible judgement, and Obama really accomplished very little after his veto proof majority dried up in 2010; add to that his signature achievement is in trouble, and you now have a 16 year long mess.

But, more broadly, I have echoed that same sentiment that you state above for a few years now, more in the vein of the unitary executive. Bush and Obama were both willing to push the limits of presidential power through manipulations and executive mandates; both of those behaviors are anti-democratic. Now, it seems that not only is Trump willing to take that same manipulation/mandate route, it’s starting to ricochet into the citizenry, with rowdy protestors over statuary ending up in fistfights with vigilantes while the police were ordered to stand aside and watch.

This is not good. However, we were in this same position in the 1960’s and recovered, although we had to wade through a mess of presidential corruption and ineffectual leadership before we got back to somebody who could govern (controversial as Reagan still is, at least he could govern effectively).

So, if 2020=1968……then you get 12 years of corrupt and crappy leadership until you get to someone who can right the ship. I don’t know if it will take that long this time, or even if we will pull out of the present mess.

But we have been here before, and during the memory of anyone older than 60.