The New York Times loves comparing presidents with other presidents. From this perspective, every action by Trump, in order to be understood and evaluated, needs to be compared with the action of a different president, usually beginning with a president of the opposing party and usually more recent to be considered most relevant. As a result, the NYT feeds the Trumpian narrative of blaming Obama for anything bad and taking credit for anything good.
The NYT takes this one step further, adding greater historical perspective in They Were Bad. He May Be Worse, an Opinion piece by historian Sean Wilentz.
The problem with comparing Trump with past presidents, the Times is telling us that past is prologue, there is a spectrum, and we can begin a reasoned analysis by assuming that Trump falls somewhere within that established spectrum.
But what if Trump is the first president who comes into office as the head of an extensive family-run, Russian-backed criminal enterprise. Current investigations, if allowed to proceed, may demonstrate that Trump and his family are dependent on a powerful foreign adversary, a billionaire who controls a vast criminal enterprise of oligarchs and crime families. That is, of course, Putin.
Any opinion article that compares Trump with other U.S. presidents that ignores the possibility (really the likelihood) that Trump is a money launderer for Russian criminals effectively normalizes Trump even while pretending to criticize him with comparisons to the worst presidents.
Trump is the first president who has no background in government or experience as a general in the military. He bears no resemblance to prominent business people in the U.S. by temperment, intellect, or other indicators of capability. If we need to make historical comparisons for better understanding, let's start with organized crime families or other masters of extensive criminal enterprises and then ask, why was no mafia head never president of the U.S.?
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