Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter revisited, Part VI: 1980 versus 2020

 Six days.  Just six days until the stage is set for Amy Coney Barrett to cast her deciding vote to re-elect Donald Trump for his second term.

Kiddingnotkidding.

It'll take some time for the case to work its way up to the Supreme Court.  I don't actually know how many days it will be, but it will be more than six.

Anyway, the 2020 election is nearly upon us, and as I wrap up my reassessment of the Donald Trump/Jimmy Carter comparison, and all the ways I went wrong back in 2016, we turn to the 2020 election.  Beginning, of course, with the numbers.  'Cuz I'm me.

16.4%.

Quiz time.  Do you recognize that number?  Likely not.  If I just throw out a number like that, you have no chance of recognizing it.  But... it was Q2 GDP growth in... 1978!  That's right, that was the second quarter economic growth in 1978, when Jimmy Carter was President.  You know, "history's greatest monster!"  Of course, some caveats are in order for that number.  First, it was an outlier, and second, inflation was somewhat higher during that period.  Going by trimmed mean PCE, which is my preferred measure of inflation (complicated-- ask me again tomorrow, says the magic 8-ball), inflation was running between 5 and 6%, and on its way up, but still.  WOW!  The thing is, Carter was bad at the job.  But a) we tend to overstate how bad he was because the economy collapsed toward the end of his term, and b) presidents generally don't have as much impact on the economy as most people think.

Time, then, for a reminder.  I do this all the time, so apologies for those who are sick of this.  DDRRDDRR...  From 1944 through 2016, how many D's or R's would I have to flip for this to be the perfect pattern?

One.

1980.

If you left every other election the same, it would be DDRRDDRR all the way through.  Why?  Two and two.  For whatever reason, the American public reelects a party for one term, and then switches parties.  This is the basis for the Abramowitz "Time for a Change" model.  Why?  Uh... Uh...  They just do.

Why was 1980 different?  The economy like, totally sucked.  In Q2, GDP dropped 8%, with inflation at similar levels.  Stagflation.  Ug-ly.

In order to keep the 2-and-2 pattern, the GOP held three terms with the sequence of the 1980, 84 and 88 elections, but the economy was awesome in '88.  2 and 2.  Boom.  Done.  Unless... everything just totally falls apart.

And we return to the basic observation that presidents just don't matter nearly as much as many people think.  That said, Carter kinda sucked.  Had he been more successful negotiating with Congress, would that economy have turned around and gotten him that second term?  No.  The whole point of capitalism, as I often have to remind people, is that the president is not a central planner, sitting at the middle of a switchboard flipping switches to control the economy.  The whole point of capitalism, in fact, is to make it so that nobody is in that position.  To make government as minimally relevant as possible because central planning doesn't work.

That doesn't mean it can't be necessary sometimes, and the 1981-2 recession occurred when the Fed raised interest rates to bring down inflation, after which things settled, but Carter was gone by then.  Sorry, Jimmy.  Not a whole lot he could have done.  Bad president with bad luck.

But then we come to Donald J. Trump.  Until March, he had basically the best luck of any president ever, and he was jockeying for a spot at the top of the worst presidents list.  I regularly excoriated my political scientist colleagues for ranking him as worse than Buchanan prior to COVID, but he was in the bottom tier, no doubt.

Yet prior to COVID, he had inherited one of the best economies in the history of the country, and demonstrating my earlier point, he just hadn't done enough to blow it up.  He tried, but he's bad at everything.  The trade war was minor in scale, and sorry, commies, but tax cuts don't blow up an economy.  I know you want to believe they do because you have all those recipes planned for fricasseeing anyone who did their fucking homework in school, lived within their means and invested with a smart plan, but tax cuts don't actually blow up the economy.  Put down the recipes.

Then... COVID.  Q2 GDP this year went off a fucking cliff.  It dropped 31.4% because we shut down the economy.

Mathematically, that puts Donnie-boy in the House that Jimmy built.  And here's the thing.  Carter wasn't really particularly responsible.  That didn't matter because presidents just get credit and blame.

Trump?  Well, Achen and Bartels, as I have noted, have conducted analysis showing that incumbents actually do take the blame for "acts of god."  The data on the 1917-8 pandemic are a little messy, but the basic principle behind Achen & Bartels' analysis is that if the incumbent's response to the "act of god" is deemed insufficient, the incumbent pays the price.

Here, Trump faces not only a collapsed economy, but a clear demonstration that his own actions were the problem.  He is to blame for deaths.  Lies, attempted cover-ups, refusals to act... The works.

So to keep with the theme of this series, what if Trump knew how to negotiate with Congress?  We're... in that situation right now!  A stimulus negotiation broke down because Trump walked away from it, and re-started negotiations have faltered because... well, you figure it out.

Trump's own ineptitude with respect to negotiation caused that breakdown, and his failure to manage policy is directly related to economic circumstances.  As I often have to remind people, presidents don't matter... except in times of crisis.  Like... a pandemic.  Between the pandemic itself and the economy, both poorly managed, we have a 1980/2020 comparison.  And that comparison is a direct...

consequence of...

party reform!

See:  Polsby, Nelson W.

A real politician, meaning, one who knew something about politics, policy, and how the process works could have managed the pandemic and the economics of this.  Trump?  Nope.  We're in Achen and Bartels territory.

Amy Coney Barrett has her work cut out for her.  Fortunately for her, when Bill Barr hands her the Republicans' brief, she can grade them on the easiest curve ever.