Columns, Opinion

Minority Report: President Pendergast

Over the past few months, riots led President Donald Trump to call in federal troops to maintain order in major American cities. Some, including Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, called the President’s tactics “fascist.”

The president also admires and goes beyond flirting with dictators. After Trump’s rough intercourse with Kim Jong-un, he said they “fell in love.”

The above cases, among other examples, lead many to believe that the president should be compared to a fascist like Mussolini. But I don’t think Mussolini or any other foreign dictator is the most apt comparison.

The best comparison for Trump occurred to me when he encouraged his supporters to vote twice. That suggestion reminded me of someone from David McCullough’s “Truman,” and it was not Stalin, Mussolini, or any other dictators or fascists of Truman’s day.

Trump reminded me most of Tom Pendergast, Kansas City’s political machine boss during the 1920s and 1930s.

People voting twice — and often more frequently than that — were common in Pendergast’s Kansas City. In “Truman,” McCullough writes about “repeaters” who would vote “‘early and often’ on election day,” a practice today’s president would like his supporters to emulate.

But a revival in double-voting is far from the only similarity between Trump and Tom Pendergast.

Pendergast had so much influence over Kansas City and Missouri politics that he was responsible for the election of many politicians and judges, including Harry Truman, to the U.S. Senate.

Since the beginning of his presidency, a Trump endorsement has been among the most sought-after endorsements for Republicans. Trump’s endorsement is a near-guarantee of winning a primary race in the Republican Party. More often than not, it also strengthens a candidate’s position overall.

Truman had a close relationship with the Pendergast machine, and was mocked with the nickname “Senator from Pendergast.” After Pendergast was indicted in 1939 for income tax evasion, Truman’s ties to Pendergast became much more of a liability — he almost lost his Senate race in 1940 after anti-Pendergast sentiment was taken out on him at the ballot box.

Republicans who choose to maintain positive relations with Trump will suffer similar backlash going into the 2020 elections.

With so much anger directed at him on a national level, Democrats should be able to capitalize by beating pro-Trump — Republican is a euphemism at this point — senators.

All a Democrat needs to do is tie Trump to the Republican candidate, something even Democrats could accomplish, then watch as the Republican’s chances plummet when voters take their Trump rage out on the candidate.

Trump’s corrosive effect is already visible in the Senate race in my home state of Iowa. Republican Joni Ernst won her Senate race by more than 8 percent in 2014. Ernst is now losing to Democrat Theresa Greenfield by 3 percent in the most recent Public Policy Polling poll taken in mid-August, with part of the outrage undoubtedly fueled by Ernst’s consistent support for Trump.

However, the most peculiar similarities between Pendergast and Trump are the way they mix personal business with politics. Trump frequently uses his office to enrich himself, a practice in which Pendergast was similarly well-versed.

Trump has shifted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to his companies through hotel stays and travel costs.

He also proposed hosting the G-7 summit at his Doral resort in Florida, which would’ve filled his coffers with the money of foreign leaders and their entourages — not to mention the public funds the president’s retinue would’ve spent at Doral.

Pendergast spent years enriching himself with taxpayer dollars in much the same way Trump has. He frequently awarded public contracts to construction companies, most prominently the Ready-Mixed Concrete Company, that he either owned or had large stakes in.

Those similarities vis a vis business and politics are unsettling, but not jarring. However, Pendergast and Trump gave identical explanations for using taxpayer money to line their pockets.

Though he eventually retracted the proposal to host the G-7 summit at his Doral resort, Trump defended hosting the meeting at his property by saying, “We haven’t found anything that could even come close to competing with it.”

When asked why he kept giving public contracts to companies he owned, Pendergast said, “Why not? Aren’t my products as good as any?”

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One Comment

  1. very insightful!