22/24 and 45/47

Only two Presidents have been elected to non-consecutive terms.  The first was Grover Cleveland who served as 22nd (in 1884) and 24th (in 1892) Presidential terms (his two terms interrupted by Benjamin Harrison in 1888 even though Cleveland won the popular vote).  Long time readers will know that Cleveland is very much a Friend of the Blog, being listed as one of the top US Presidents since forever.

The second, of course, is Donald Trump - Presidential terms 45 and (now) 47.  We will see how history rates his two terms; 45 was pretty successful but with a lot of important stuff left undone.  His great Presidential flaw was the people he appointed do implement his policies where they often submarined him.

We will see how much he learned from that.  Glen Reynolds posts some interesting ideas (you should absolutely read the whole thing; it's certain that Trump's people have):

Last time around, Trump squandered his momentum.  He passed the tax bill that the establishment GOP wanted, after which they didn’t need anything from him and turned to obstructing him.  Here’s something I wrote in 2017:

Like airplanes on a runway.  Trump’s approach this time around should be what he should have done last time:  Shock and awe.  Shut down departments, fire bureaucrats, exercise emergency powers, all so fast that the establishment’s responses are saturated.  Javier Millei’s whirlwind assault in Argentina should be the model, sometimes in specifics but also in general approach.  Bureaucrats move slowly; Trump should move fast.

 

Elon Musk says he can cut $2 trillion easily; do it.  Also, set bureaucrats competing with each other for what funds remain.  Divide and conquer.

Bold added by me, because it's right in line with something I posted in the last week or so:

The interesting question here is how you scale this throughout all the Federal Agencies.  I think the answer is to use business-as-usual: different offices play office politics against each other to get budget and headcount.  That's how the game is played.  So set up an incentive structure for Office A to rat our Office B's inefficiencies and duplications to save their own skins.  I expect that this would pay big dividends.

So we shall see what we shall see.  The results from last night were not the landslide I was sort of expecting (although it was a solid win).  I expect there was some cheating but nothing like what we saw in 2020 - because as I've been saying, party apparatchiks saw the same Preference Cascade forming and a lot fewer were willing to risk jail to cheat for a loser.

But like Donald Trump, the USA dodged a bullet last night.