Souvy

And politics/international agreements differ from that how, exactly?

not2old

wait on a minute, the US national debt doubled in Obam's 8 year term from $10 trillion to edging $20 trillion. Not a good record for a career politician or its foreign then secretary Clinton

So is it likely that every career politican knows better, that they can run the country better than a reality star or a past president that was a [bozo] movie actor?

Charity begins at home

Shard

Human welfare perhaps? Geo-political stability? The real world is not a zero sum game; Trump's world is. Hence, the bankruptcies, and sleazy media career.

Shard

Do you recall a wee financial crisis round about 8 years ago? Finishing up of a Republican led war (not to be repeated in Syria). Might have something to do with it.

not2old

Hum humming.... lets not forget the squeaky clean 'Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ford, Bill Clinton, the Bush boys, all the lies, war & debt. Of course without a mention of Blair & Brown

Before crucify the new US President, lets wait & see in his new role if he & all his handlers can do something to 'make America great again', after all it can't get any worse than what it is now, can it?

People can only wish & hope things in America will be better, 'a better America' makes the rest of the world a better place

Edo

Yeah my hope is for Elon Musk to give us that SpaceX asap.

not2old

of course, as do I remember the Vietnam war that ran with four or was that five US president term of office & all the debt that it created

BristolUK

Cinnamon and Baked beans with that piece of pork fat in the tin please.

Vulcanoid

As I recall, Trump's party controlled Congress - which controls the purse strings - for 6 of those 8 years.

Realistically, because of the way its system can lead to gridlock, and different people with very different aims occupying (1) the spending part (2) the revenue part and (3) the block-any-change-of-either part of government, you can't assign budgetary blame the way you can in a Parliamentary system. In Canada, Britain, Germany, a party/coalition sets the budget, the spending, the taxes, etc, and they might aim for a surplus, or a deficit, or a deficit to grow the economy for a surplus in the future, or austerity to cut the debt to give more money to spend in the future, or whatever - but they have a coherent set of controls. If you don't like the economic results of May, or Trudeau, or Merkel, you can point at someone and know it was them. For the US, that was only even possibly the case for Obama for 2 years (and even then, he didn't have the control a PM does), and for Trump now (likewise).

Ironic, considering a primary idea behind Presidential systems is the ability to assign personal praise and blame for results

Danny B

I had to laugh at this

scrubbedexpat091

He just convinced the rust belt he could bring back jobs to the region. He didn't have to convince a majority of voters and he didn't convince the majority, but he convinced enough in the correct mix of states and that is all he needed.

The majority of voters as a nation voted for someone else.

If we didn't have the silly electoral college system in place, he never would have won.

Shard

From the Guardian on that very point:

Michael Paarlberg:

Most of the world’s great strongmen give great speeches – should we be disappointed that ours does not? Trump’s inaugural address veered from religious pieties to dystopian hellscapes – “American carnage,” in his words – yet by the end, raising a clenched fist in defiance of the hated Washington elites he now commands, there could be little doubt of his authoritarian credentials. There was something reassuringly familiar in his decree that “the people will become the rulers of this nation again,” and his promise of a government “controlled by the people”.

Every day, the people will rule more,” promised Hugo Chavez in 2011. “The people will be the ones who decide,” said Nicolás Maduro last year. Erdogan: “There is no power higher than the power of the people.” Generally, the greater the invocation of the people, the greater the president’s cronies will be fleecing the country. These are definitely not the people

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he promised, as if had just inherited the problems of Venezuela.

beckiwoo

Hopefully Fireball as well

BristolUK

Had to look that up. Sounds awful.

magnumpi

It's a great way to elect a new leader, until your team loses then it sucks