President Trump campaigned on the promise to shake things up and drain the swamp. To the cheers of some, he is not just shaking the system up, but blowing it up. Instead of draining the swamp he is doing the opposite, presiding over the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history.

Even Trump’s opponents hoped, and some even believed, that once elected, this novice politician never having held political office and the experience of having to satisfy multiple constituencies would become presidential. Even a semi-competent politician would reach out to the citizenry and expand his constituency. Even the most sage and experienced winning candidate, realizing the magnitude and complexity of the most powerful position in the world, would seek advice of experienced professionals and appoint qualified personnel who believed in the missions of their respective departments. 

Forget it! Trump early on informed us that “I, alone, can fix it.” Proclaiming himself “a stable genius,” he relies on the old adage, “Ya gotta dance with who brung ya.” That strategy has worked brilliantly—for him, if not the nation. Why change?

Another applicable adage is, “He was born on third base, and thought he hit a triple.” Trump inherited a small fortune as a child. He avoided military service due to bone spurs. So did others for various reasons, so no problem with that, except that his supporters and fellow Republicans had no problem trashing John Kerry as “not deserving his purple hearts.”

While many of his cohorts went to war, Trump claimed his “major problem” was avoiding venereal disease as he chased women who chased money. We now find out that he paid a bright kid to take his SATs for him, qualifying him for entry into an elite Ivy League institution. He graduated, even as his academic records remain beneath a veil of secrecy.

Using his inherited money, he engaged in multiple financial ventures, going bankrupt several times. He was bailed out by his father and other benefactors. We might find out someday who they were. Meanwhile, with the aid of his sycophants, his financial records also remain hidden beneath a veil of secrecy.

He bills himself as the world’s greatest deal maker. However, he always dealt from a position of power, always in control, while stiffing contractors with less power. Among his con games was creation of “Trump University,” a scam which eventually cost him millions in damages.

After a checkered financial career and a television gig where show business hucksters cast him as a “financial genius,” he decided to run for president, not for his ghost of a chance to win, but to burnish his brand. But alas, in the Republican primary he beat what the media clones, with remarkable flexibility of the English language, labeled as a “strong field” of Republican candidates. 

Between a lot of angry voters looking to shake up the system, his mastery of the electronic media and its false equivalence reporting, his wild promises, and an incompetent Clinton campaign in which everything that could have gone wrong did, the slickest con artist since PT Barnum becomes the unlikely president. The so-called “liberal media” had ignored Trump’s lies about having “nothing to do” with Russia, even as he was negotiating with Putin for the privilege of building a Trump Tower in Moscow — an enterprise intended to enrich both him and Putin. 

Trump is as shocked as the nation — totally unprepared, with not even a transition team in place. 

With the exception of a few competent appointees such as Marine General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, Trump nominates, and his Senate Republican sycophants confirm, the most incompetent and corrupt cabinet in recent history — individuals that not only don’t believe in the missions of their departments, but aim to subvert them. 

The corruption of several appointees became so apparent that they resign under pressure; HHS Secretary Price, Interior Secretary Zinke, and EPA Administrator Pruitt, for example. Others leave under frustration of being ignored, NSA Director General McMaster, for example. 

Even Secretary of State Tillerson, a man of some accomplishment and apparent good intent proved unable to understand his job. His gutting of the State Department of competent personnel prompted Defense Secretary Mattis to observe that if you reduce the diplomats, you will have to “send me more bullets.” The well-read Marine understood the importance of diplomacy better than Tillerson himself.

Vanquished Republicans of that “strong field” that Trump viciously trashed; Cruz, Graham, and Rubio, for example, quickly changed course and tied themselves to Trump. 

The apparent connection of the Trump campaign to Russia resulted in the Mueller Investigation that dominated the scene for a long period. With the aid of AG Barr, Trump’s stonewalling got him off the hook from the Mueller Report, prompting one wag to observe, “Never send a Marine (who follows the rules) to do a hitman’s job” — as Ken Starr did to Clinton.

“Ya gotta dance with who brung ya” continued to work brilliantly for Trump, so he upped the ante. He withheld congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine in return for announcing investigation into Trump’s likely political opponent. 

The 2018 election had brought some new congress members who were also angry — at traditional Democratic inaction of lying down and playing dead. The impeachment investigation was launched.

Predictably, it failed. Republican politicians either love Trump or are scared stiff of his wrath.

Historians remind us that presidents don’t control the agenda.

Enter COVID-19. Trump is responsible for his inaction regarding the pandemic that he billed as a Democratic hoax. 

Enter the tragic George Floyd video, and reminders of the sheer brutality of the Southern Confederacy — slavery and thousands of lynchings.

Trump claims brilliant success in dealing with COVID-19. He continues to denounce peaceful protest as criminal, rounding protestors up with his secret police.

After all, “Ya gotta dance with who brung ya” has worked for him — until now.

His polling numbers are bleak. We’ll see.

— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.