Ronald Reagan popularized the following view of American government still shared by a great number of voters today: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” 

Indeed, many taxpayers today criticize government waste, bloat, incompetence, and inefficiency and contrast it to business management: “If a business were run this way, it would go bankrupt.” Indeed, Donald Trump has been elected twice in large part because his supporters wanted a savvy businessman to run the government like a lean, mean, profit-making machine.

Yet, while the wealthiest Americans might have profited exponentially under President Trump’s policies, our CEO President has bankrupted our nation in more ways than money can measure.

Actually, bankruptcy has been Trump’s most lucrative business strategy.  He’s had a string of six bankruptcies before ever becoming President, and in each he’s burdened his investors, creditors, and contractors with debt while protecting his own personal wealth.  He’s propped up a business with other people’s money, run it into debt, and then dumped his responsibility on financial victims.

Trump has been managing the U.S. government in a similar fashion, not only financially but politically, morally, and ethically.  He’s cut taxes necessary for the general welfare, gutted government agencies and departments of experienced personnel; eliminated government regulations and oversight that provide citizen protections from government abuse;  slashed the IRS that investigates tax cheats and corruption; sabotaged DEI initiatives that pursue equal justice and opportunity for victims of systemic racism and sexism; fired diplomats that keep the peace; slashed health care for those that can least afford it; and voided international agreements with allies.

Supposedly, chain sawing government was to “Make America Rich,” yet these indiscriminate cuts actually deepened the nation’s debt over $2 trillion during Trump’s  second term, enriched the wealthiest class, burdened consumers with nonsensical tariffs, slashed environmental protections from pollution and climate change, and pumped trillion of dollars, and counting, into an adventurist Iranian War paid by consumers at the gas pumps and grocery stores.  

Meanwhile, the President builds luxurious ballrooms and gilded monuments; he slaps his face and name all over the nation’s capital and even on American currency, all in the name of vanity.   For CEO Trump, this self-serving administration may just be business as usual.  Yet, for the American people and the democratic world, our present government is a disgrace.

Granted, the economic damage he’s done to consumers may impact voters the most.  But it’s the bankruptcy of America’s democratic identity in the world that can’t be measured in dollars and cents.

In his efforts to “Make America Rich,” he’s disgracefully turned our nation’s back upon our democratic allies, like Ukraine and Taiwan, using them as bargaining chips in business deals with dictators like Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi.  Like these imperial minded despots, he’s threatened to absorb into the U.S. democratic neighbors like Greenland and Canada.  He also imposed crippling tariffs on them at the expense of American consumers.

He’s treated immigrants and asylum seekers “yearning to breathe free” like criminals to be arrested, imprisoned, and deported without due process under the law.  He’s repeatedly violated the laws of the land, including his failed insurrection, his tax frauds, his hush money payments, his sexual abuses, his obstruction of justice, and his conflicts of interest –all without suffering any legal consequences.

He’s defied the courts that have attempted to thwart his violations of the law, and he’s weaponized the Department of Justice to attack those upholding the law.

Overall, he’s dismantled and otherwise hollowed our institutions, reducing government to a family business run by yes men, political sycophants, and corporate CEOs.  Worst of all, he’s ruined the international reputation of a once generous, responsible, democratic nation and replaced it with an imperialist, greedy, reckless, authoritarian one.

This is what happens when unregulated business runs the ship of state and throws the rudder of democratic government overboard: Our ship runs aground, stuck in a Mideast War of Trump’s own making, (one that President Obama had avoided through diplomacy a decade ago); it’s stuck in a negotiation run by a blowhard President, his son-in-law, and a yes man Secretary of State, rather than by experienced diplomats and trustworthy statesmen.

Meanwhile, under the President’s thumb, our Congress remains paralyzed by political partisanship, divided between spineless Republicans and powerless Democrats unwilling to assert its power to stop a war the President has no right to declare.  Worse, we find a political divide that has turned not only party against party, but citizen against citizen, neighbor against neighbor, and even family against family.  As President Lincoln cautioned in his own time: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

In short, to accumulate a mountain of personal wealth and power for himself and his cronies; Trump has sold out our democracy by abandoning the nation’s high moral, ethical, and legal ground on which America’s true greatness has historically stood.

No, a democratic government cannot be run like a business for the benefit and profit of its owners, and it certainly won’t be run for the benefit of its citizens.   Lest we forget our democratic purpose stated in the Preamble of the Constitution:

“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the        general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,    do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Instead of pursuing these democratic goals according to the law, our President has undermined them.  So, while the majority may have voted to have the government run like a business, the CEO they elected has bankrupted our nation of its democratic purpose.

Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher from Avon.