A Liberal in Trumpistan: President Trump Gets an "F" in History (Even Grading on a Curve)

Well, thank god, I say, that President Donald J. Trump is a pure product of America’s private schools.

As a former public school teacher, I grow weary listening to “experts” bash the nation’s public schools. But our current President’s bumbling grasp of history, not to mention science, syntax and social norms—it’s all on the private schools.

Today we stick with history. Based on what we know, Mr. Trump believes the only good generals we’ve had since World War II are…well, no one. “Oh, boy,” you often hear him say, “if only we had generals like Patton and MacArthur!” Or: “We don’t win any more. We need Patton and MacArthur.” Or: “We’re going to bring back Patton and MacArthur from the grave. With Patton and MacArthur and the Ghost of Christmas Past, we’ll defeat ISIS in, like, fifteen minutes.”

Easy as that.

This week, President Trump talked about how Andrew Jackson could have stopped the Civil War.

Unfortunately, if you know even a tiny fragment of history, you wonder why Trump doesn’t mention generals H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. and Colin Powell. The latter masterminded the plan for the invasion of Iraq in 1991 and the former led U.S. and Allied forces to a smashing victory over Saddam Hussein in only six weeks.

Remember? Iraqi losses were at least 100,000 killed and wounded. Schwarzkopf and his troops captured another 70,000.

Losses on our side totaled 1,700.

So Schwarzkopf would be worth discussing.

And Powell.

Wait. Never mind. During the 2016 campaign a leaked email from General Powell referred to Trump as a “national disgrace and an international pariah.”

Moving on.

It’s actually kind of fun to realize that the only leader from the First Gulf War who merited Mr. Trump’s praise is Saddam Hussein. According to Trump, Saddam was a master at dealing with terrorists. Yes, that homicidal maniac had his good points.

He knew how to deal with terrorists.

As it often seemed, Trump appeared to know less than nothing about history. What he did know was wrong. You wondered if he had heard of the Kurds, currently, and for the last decade, easily our most dependable allies in the fight in Iraq. You wondered if he knew anything at all about how Saddam used torture, gunfire and heaping helpings of poison gas to kill at least 50,000 Kurds in their villages.

(Press Secretary Sean Spicer, care to comment?)

Getting back to U.S. history and U.S. generals, Trump could just as easily have mentioned Dwight D. Eisenhower, Patton’s actual commander during World War II. He could have mentioned him and got in a plug for a sane Republican leader at the same time. Then again, “Ike,” as he was known, liked golf.

And we all know how much Mr. Trump despised seeing a president play golf. He couldn’t stomach watching Obama on the links. During the campaign he promised adoring crowds in red hats he was going to be so busy working for them he’d hardly have any time left to poof his hair in the morning or tweet!

(Now, he loves golf.)

Trump’s tenuous grip on history became even more obvious after he took a seat in the Oval Office. On the first day of Black History Month, in February, he offered a shout out to a giant in the fight for equality. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more,” our Chief Executive said.

No doubt, Trump lovers were impressed. “Hey!” you could almost hear them saying, “This proves our guy’s not a racist! And neither are we! He’s the least racist person he knows. I mean: He just complimented a negro!!!!” (I believe some Trump fans still prefer the small “n” form of the word, the style a century ago, when America was great and Jim Crow and lynching were all the rage.)

Unfortunately, neither Trump nor his fans seemed to realize Douglass’ best work was behind him. He wasn’t getting noticed “more and more.”

He was dead.

Like since 1895.

It was another piece in a sad pattern. Trump seemed surprised to learn all federal judges were actual not “so-called” judges and had a right to block his travel bans if they were thought to be unconstitutional. He seemed mystified to find there were three branches of government and Congress could be refractory and appeared surprised to “discover” that Abraham Lincoln was once a Republican who lived at some point in a distant past.

What Lincoln might have done, chopped down a cherry tree, or agreed to the Louisiana Purchase, or got stuck in the White House bathtub one really bad day, apparently stumped President Trump.

Andrew Jackson, though! Now there was a president! When the U.S. Supreme Court told “Old Hickory,” as Jackson was known, he couldn’t force the Cherokee Indians off their lands—because they were rightful owners—he stood right up to those “so-called” judges, particularly a pesky Chief Justice! “John Marshall has made his decision,” the President fumed. “Now let him enforce it.”

Yeah, who needs an independent judiciary!

So what if the Cherokee had signed an array of treaties? In the old days, no one cared about treaties! As the governor of Georgia said at the time, treaties were “expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage people were induced without bloodshed to yield up what civilized peoples had a right to possess.” Jackson and the U.S. Army sent the Cherokee packing to Oklahoma in 1835.

The civilized people got the land. They brought in slaves and grew lots of civilized cotton. Jackson occasionally sold one of his slaves and pocketed the civilized cash. All was right with a civilized Union.

Besides, only a quarter of the Cherokee people perished on the trip west. They still had three-quarters of their men, women and children.

Plus they didn’t have to worry about repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Now, this past weekend, President Trump dived into the shallow end of the historical pool yet again, cracking his skull on adamantine facts. In an interview with a reporter from the Washington Examiner, Trump brought up Jackson again. Only this time, he felt the urge to talk about Civil War.

Clearly, Trump has an affinity for Jackson. People, he says, compare him with Jackson all the time. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Trump explained during a visit to The Hermitage, Jackson’s old home near Nashville, in March. He was going to be just like Jackson! He promised! He was going to fight a “growing aristocracy.”

I believe his plan was to do so by giving billionaires (not to mention himself and all his children) massive tax cuts.

What President 45 really wanted to do was revisit the story of President 7. “I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump mused. “He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’ People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

Well, people do ask that question. Frederick Douglass, who ran away from slavery, asked it often while he was alive.

Why couldn’t it have been worked out—by Jackson, for starters—just because he happened to die in 1845? Okay. One must admit he died before Texas entered the Union as a slave state. He died before we battered Mexico in a war. Old Hickory died before gold was discovered in California, before the people voted to come into the Union as a free state. He was dead and moldering in his grave when violence exploded and “Bleeding Kansas” bathed in gore. He was even deader, if possible, by the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, the slave, would not be freed because Mr. Scott was property and had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

So, for Trump, a little history lesson seems in order. First, a deceased president can’t stop anything, including a Civil War that began in 1861. Second, the war was all about slavery and that’s not just “fake news.” Finally, the struggle for justice, for the advancement of freedom for all members of the human race, that struggle has always proved long and hard. And you don’t want to halt or retard it.

Or do you, sir?

Only the future and future historians will tell.