The Toddler-In-Chief

The Toddler-In-Chief Description

&It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. . . . And we are trying to do what&s right even when Donald Trump won&t.&&An anonymous senior administrative official in an op-ed published in a New York Times op-ed, September 5, 2018   Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What&s more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump&s staffers, subordinates, and allies on Capitol Hill also describe Trump like a small, badly behaved preschooler.             In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he&s collected more than one thousand tweets&a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take readers through the different dimensions of Trump&s infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. In these pages, Drezner follows his theme&the specific ways in which sharing some of the traits of a toddler makes a person ill-suited to the presidency&to show the lasting, deleterious impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy.             The &adults in the room& may not be able to rein in Trump&s toddler-like behavior, but, with the 2020 election fast approaching, the American people can think about whether they want the most powerful office turned into a poorly run political day care facility. Drezner exhorts us to elect a commander-in-chief, not a toddler-in-chief. And along the way, he shows how we must rethink the terrifying powers we have given the presidency.