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By Hal Brown
Drain the swamp has an entry in Wikipedia. Draining swamps was a practice first used to combat mosquito infestations but the term was picked up by politicians. It was first used by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) who wrote that to "clear the swamp" (the first obvious step to reclaiming "poisonous and swampy wilderness") was an apt metaphor for how to start addressing "the disgrace to us of the present condition of our Indians."
This is how Wiki described how Trump used it:
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- Donald Trump to describe his plan to fix problems in the federal government.[1][11] In the three weeks before the 2016 election, he tweeted "Drain the swamp" 79 times, usually as a hashtag, and he tweeted the word "swamp" another 75 times in the four years following that election.[12] His 2020 campaign's senior advisor, Jason Miller,[13] and his 2020 campaign manager, Bill Stepien,[14] referred to the Commission on Presidential Debates as "swamp monsters." Protests against the role of Goldman Sachs alumni in the Trump administration also used the metaphor.[15] Commentators noted that the phrase was used only as a rhetorical weapon, while protecting corrupt politics.[16]
As former cranberry farmers my late wife and I owned 200 acres of wetlands. We knew that swamps and marshes (wetlands) were a valuable resource. Ecologists know this as well:
Swamps are among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth. They act like giant sponges or reservoirs. When heavy rains cause flooding, swamps and other wetlands absorb excess water, moderating the effects of flooding. Swamps also protect coastal areas from storm surges that can wash away fragile coastline. (National Geographic)
Swamps also act as a giant and highly effective filter adding clean water to the aquifer. We pumped water from the streams running through our swamps to flood our bogs before harvest and thought nothing of picking up a few cranberries from the swamp water and popping them into our mouths to munch on. (Click to enlarge image above)
I thought of this when I read this story on HuffPost:
This was an impossible story to miss since it was the headline article on HuffPost.
Excerpt:
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden quickly set about undoing some of his predecessor’s signature policies: He said the United States would rejoin the Paris Agreement; he halted construction of a wall along the Mexican border; and he ended the ban on travel to the U.S. from Muslim-majority countries.
Tucked into all of those high-profile moves, though, was a memo with a title seemingly designed to be ignored: “Modernizing Regulatory Review.” Sent to the press at 9:43 p.m. on Wednesday in the middle of the Tom Hanks-led inaugural celebration, the White House was not expecting the dry document to drive headlines or set American hearts aflutter.
But the memo could unleash a wave of stronger regulations to reduce income inequality, fight climate change and protect public health. Among left-leaning experts on regulation, it’s a signal that Biden could break with 40 years of conservative policy.
“I realize what I’m about to say to you sounds absurd,” James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, told HuffPost. “It has the potential to be the most significant action Biden took on day one.”
My point isn’t what this particular memo does. My point is that someone had the knowledge to inform him that this was an important enough change to make on his first day.
Trump got advice from people like Stephen Miller, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, Kirstjen Nielsen, William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Dr. Scott Atlas, and others in the White House or Cabinet, as well as a cast of characters from Fox News to come up with his racist, cruel, ignorant, nationalist, and other dictatorial draconian executive orders. And then of course there’s his recent flirtation with the MYPillow guy. If you want to consider them swamp creatures they should be considered a dangerous invasive species.
With President Joe Biden we have a president who is refilling the swamp with highly competent flora and fauna who have a task no less daunting than implementing Reconstruction following the Civil War. While they don’t have President Andrew Johnson and the KKK to contend with they have former President Donald Trump and his supporters in Congress and his millions of followers to deal with.
It is telling to note that even before Trump’s attempts to overturn the elections and stage a coup historians rated him among the three worst presidents, James Buchanan who served prior to the Civil War and Jackson who followed Abraham Lincoln and was the first president to ever be impeached after proving unable to work with Congress after the war had ended.
This is how The New York Times put it in The Trump Presidency Is Now History. So How Will It Rank?
But as historians consider the legacy of Donald J. Trump, it appears that even the woefully inadequate Buchanan has some serious competition for the spot at the bottom.
“Trump was the first president to be impeached twice and the first to stir up a mob to try to attack the Capitol and disrupt his successor from becoming president,” said Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis. “These will definitely go down in history books, and they are not good.”
“I already feel that he is the worst,” said Ted Widmer, professor of history at the City University of New York, noting that as bad as Buchanan was — and he was very bad indeed — he was “not as aggressively bad as Trump.”
“Andrew Johnson and Nixon would be the two others in the worst category, and I think Trump has them beat pretty handily, too,” he added. “He has invented a whole new category, a subbasement that no one knew existed.”
With Trump ranking in the new subbasement for worst presidents, having pushed the country to the brink of becoming a dystopian autocracy, Biden has a low bar to move to the higher ranks of best presidents in the judgment of future historians. Even earning a C grade from future historians would be an accomplishment.
I think that with his political savvy and with the team he has selected he is more than up to the job. For one example, his first confirmed Cabinet Secretary, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin just ordered a review of military sexual assault prevention programs.
Biden may not end up in the pantheon of the greatest presidents. Historians agree on the top three: Washington who saved us from the British, Lincoln who ended slavery and the Confederacy, and FDR who brought us out of The Depression and assured we’d win World War II, I wouldn’t rule out his breaking into the rarified atmosphere of other top presidents if he can defeat or start the process of totally destroying Trumpism as a viable movement.
Note: Consider my comment (no. 2) to be an addendum to this story.