First District voters who have supported Andy Harris as a “man of principle” better think again. Last week Harris had two decisions to make. First, would he support a budget resolution that increases the federal debt? Second, how would he react to President Trump and Vice President Vance bullying Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office? 

Harris chose Trump over principle twice. 

In April 2024, Harris wrote: “Our national debt is almost $35 trillion. That is over $103,000 per citizen. It is time to get our fiscal house in order.”  The House-passed FY 2026 budget raises the Federal Debt Ceiling by four trillion dollars. Guess who voted for it? Andy Harris. Like every other Republican in the House of Representatives save one, Harris voted “aye.” 

The bill extends and expands Trump’s 2017 tax cuts at a 10-year cost of $4.5 trillion (as much as $11.2 billion if you believe The Committee for a Responsible Budget). 

So much for fiscal responsibility. Harris is putting Trump ahead of principle.

But it gets worse. Donald Trump has adopted Putin’s Russia as our ally. The President has called Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator.” 

Only a little over a year ago, Andy Harris, then Co-Chair of the House Ukraine Caucus, wrote: “Tomorrow marks two years since Vladimir Putin began the brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. In that time, the Ukrainian people have demonstrated extraordinary courage and resolve in the face of evil and have bravely faced down the onslaught of unprovoked Russian aggression on their lives and in their country. I am proud to join my fellow Congressional Ukraine Caucus Members in introducing this new House Resolution to commemorate Ukraine as she stands against the continued, unprovoked, and illegal Russian aggression.”

After Friday’s disastrous Oval Office meeting, Harris dutifully lined up behind nearly every other Congressional Republican to criticize President Zelenskyy rather than Trump. 

Our man in Washington wrote: “It was unbecoming of President Zelenskyy to disrespect the President and Vice-President of the United States on live television in our cherished Oval Office. President Trump rightly pointed out the Russia/Ukraine war could lead to World War III – this calls for diplomatic leadership not grandstanding and performative behavior on the world stage.”

Harris has not disagreed with Trump calling Zelenskyy a dictator and talking about inviting Putin to visit the president in Washington. Will the House Ukraine Caucus expel Harris? It should. 

Another Maryland Congressman, Steny Hoyer reacted differently to last Friday’s Oval Office abuse of President Zelenskyy.  Hoyer wrote: 

“Donald Trump and JD Vance’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office today is among the most disgraceful, feckless, and destructive scenes in the annals of American diplomacy. A president who is serious about a just, lasting peace does not invite the leader of a besieged ally to the White House only to berate him in front of the world. The only people talking about World War III are Trump and Vladimir Putin.”

“Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people want peace. They have wanted it ever since Putin illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. They have prayed for it every single one of the 1,100 days since Putin launched his illegal, full-scale invasion of their sovereign nation. Ukrainians correctly recognize, however, that they will never know peace again if they concede to Vladimir Putin’s demands. Neither will the free world. Any agreement that fails to guarantee Ukraine’s security and deal Putin a resounding strategic defeat is not a peace deal – just an opportunity for Russia to recover, rearm, and reinvade in the near future. Crucially, a Russian victory would be an invitation to dictators around the world to take aim at other democratic nations. “

“History makes that lesson plain. Neville Chamberlain did not secure peace by forfeiting Sudetenland. Donald Trump will not secure peace by gifting Putin the Donbas. Appeasing a dictator does not sate his hunger for expansion; it only makes him crave it more.”

“Many of my Republican colleagues profess to know that lesson. Now is the time to prove it. Do not let our Congress – and our country – abandon Ukraine.”

The Eastern Shore needs a Congressional representative who represents its residents, not Donald Trump. I would trade Harris for Hoyer in a microsecond.

Did you know that Andy Harris claims his mother was Ukrainian? I wonder what she would think about her son’s cozying up to Trump as the president abandons Ukraine.

The First District needs someone other than Andy “Handgun” Harris in Washington. You know that. You have heard it before. 

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

Change is in the air in Washington—and on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities. As President Trump implements his campaign to reduce the cost of government, eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, American higher education will change. Given that American higher education has been the envy of the world for more than a century, this is not a good thing.

The Trump administration and conservative Republicans believe that Washington is responsible for what it sees as a liberal bias at many schools. The administration sees higher education, with rare exceptions, as hostile to the GOP. It also believes it is the source of initiatives that are obstacles to America becoming “great” again—things like DEI, academic offerings it sees as “woke,” and efforts to curtail free speech by prohibiting right-wing speakers from campus. 

The new administration, with help from Republicans in Congress, has already attacked elite institutions as anti-Semitic and accused all higher education of wastefulness. 

As the FY 2026 Budget is determined, Republicans see an opportunity to kill more than one bird with the stones of their Project 2025-inspired agenda. Several initiatives already are underway via Executive Orders and institutions have taken notice. African American and gay and lesbian studies have been curtailed at some schools, DEI offices closed, gender or ethnic-specific clubs have been banned. The goal is not to be targeted by Trump for deeper penalties.

The efforts to “get in line” may work for some institutions, but the changes in spending and policy under consideration on Capitol Hill and within the Trump administration will change American higher education for the worse. 

The writers of Project 2025 proposed:

The next Administration should work with Congress to eliminate or move OPE [Office of Postsecondary Education] programs to The ETA [Employment and Training Administration] at the Department of Labor. 

This proposal includes major modifications to institutional accreditation to prevent accreditors from requiring things like DEI programs. The goal also is to reorient higher education to increase its focus on job-training. That change conflicts directly with the mission of hundreds of small liberal arts colleges and universities. 

Project 2025 proposed:

Funding to institutions should be block-granted and narrowed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tribally controlled colleges. 

This short-sighted proposal is based on a misunderstanding of federal support for HBCUs and tribally controlled colleges. More Black and other minority students are served at non-HBCUs than at them. If the goal is to increase college attainment for underrepresented populations, cutting funding to institutions that serve such students is a major mistake. For reasons that are not clear, Project 2025 ignores Hispanic-serving institutions altogether. 

Research and other grants are important to hundreds of smaller but high-quality colleges and universities, including public institutions. The ability of these institutions to maintain their quality will be undermined if resources are eliminated. 

The Administration also seeks to move programs deemed important to our national security interests to the Department of State. How is the Department of State supposed to oversee such programs if its staff is cut? And given that most funds involved in these programs involve colleges and universities, the State Department doesn’t have the expertise to administer them.

Project 2025 calls for a complete restructuring of federal student loan programs:

The next Administration should completely reverse the student loan federalization of 2010 and work with Congress to spin off FSA [The Office of Federal Student Aid] and its student loan obligations to a new government corporation with professional governance and management.

This proposal calls for returning student lending to banks and other private sector institutions, an action taken in 2010 to reduce the cost of providing student loans. Presumably, the authors of Project 2025 believe creating a “new government corporation” would save money. Maybe call it Sallie Mae 2.0? Hopefully, The Trump Organization is NOT planning to enter the student loan business. 

More important than this change is the proposal to eliminate loan forgiveness and income contingent loan repayment plans including SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Project 2025 provides:

The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans.

It is unclear what “abuses” Project 2025 was referencing. The language in Project 2025 also would have been more honest had it added, “or not borrow federal student loans at all.”

The proposed changes would dramatically increase the cost of borrowing for college. Hundreds of thousands of students would not be able to afford college, most of them from low to moderate-income families. 

The increased cost of borrowing would also result in hundreds of smaller institutions, many affiliated with churches, closing because they will be unaffordable for most students and the schools have little or no endowment or other means of subsidizing tuition. 

House Republicans have also called for an “excise tax” on the endowments of elite colleges and universities (those with large endowments). The rate is already 1.4 percent. Proposals are now under discussion to increase that rate to 14 or even 20 percent.

This tax increase is seen as a means of punishing elite schools for their “liberal bias, “but also would produce revenue savings that could be used to help pay for extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. One unforeseen result is likely to be a decrease in donations to elite colleges and universities, something that, in the long run, will undermine their excellence.

There are other changes to higher education beyond those referenced in this column. The administration would change Title IX (Ensuring Gender Equity in Education), for example, in a way that would result in fewer athletic opportunities for women attending college.

If you agree that one of the reasons America is great today is because of our colleges and universities and widespread educational opportunity, be afraid of the Republican proposals. They would kill the higher education system that the rest of the world has sought to replicate and put an end to American leadership in technology, science, and engineering. 

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

Scroll back to 1967 when The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was released. The film was an instant classic. I watched it again recently and enjoyed it thoroughly. That experience led me to do something I’ve done dozens of times since 1967: I used the film’s title as the starting point to analyze something I didn’t like. In this column, I am doing it again.

We are in a “Wild West period” in American politics. A felon is president, and he’s angry. In some ways, he’s on a rampage, energized by power and bent on revenge against people and ideas that he believes wronged him. It’s Old Testament stuff, but the old Donald Trump remains there. He wants to be remembered as a great man despite January 6 and a chaotic first term in the White House. And to achieve that, he must do “big things” and diminish the reputations and legacies of Presidents Biden and Obama and others. Taylor Swift, for example, has repeatedly been the target of juvenile Trump social media posts.

You need a scorecard to keep track of everything Trump has done since winning the November election. (If you want a list, you can find one in the February 9th edition of the New York Times.) Trump has been busy. To keep track, I read the news, discuss issues with others involved in public policy, and monitor Trump’s social media posts (as well as those of his effective co-president, Musk). It isn’t easy to know who is on first.

Where do some of these crazy ideas come from? Why did Trump choose people who he knew, or should have known, were cringeworthy for his cabinet? And how has he managed to create a team that, despite an agenda structured to glorify 78-year-old Trump, shows up to work daily ready to deconstruct government and engage in actions that, with few exceptions, end up in court battles?

To aid in my efforts to understand Trumpism, I expanded the “analytical structure” of the 1967 Clint Eastwood film by adding “The Insane.” I did this because some of Trump’s thinking, relating to his “J6 Patriots,” the Middle East, Canada, and “terminating” the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, can only be categorized as crazy.

Here is part of my working list of what Trump has done since election day 2024:

The Good. 

I don’t have anything yet. It is good that illegal border crossings are down, but that arguable “good” outcome results from Trump’s massive ICE crackdown, which includes mass arrests and, most recently, warehousing arrestees in Guantanamo Bay, where critics accuse Trump of building a “concentration camp.”

The Bad.

Cabinet nominees unfit for service because of lack of experience (Hegseth), doubts about loyalty to the United States (Gabbard), or their personal histories (RFK, Jr., Pete Hegseth, Gaetz, and several others). Did you read that RFK, Jr. disclosed massive credit card debt on his financial disclosure forms? What type of person, regardless of their wealth, has a balance of $1 million in card debt?

Can we admit that Elon Musk is “on the scale” and is not the world’s greatest genius? Trump has set Musk loose with the instruction to deconstruct the federal government as a “special employee” of the U.S. Musk’s DOGE, using young, inexperienced people, many from Musk’s SpaceX or Tesla, is evaluating and recommending the “termination” of federal agencies about which they know little or nothing.

Musk contributed $288 million to the Trump campaign. Why would he do that, regardless of his wealth? And why do you think Musk hates government regulation?

How about nominating Ivanka’s father-in-law — a convicted felon — to serve as ambassador to France? That is more than a garden-variety faux pas.

Suspending the enforcement of a statute that criminalizes U.S. businesses engaging in bribery (The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).

Canceling President Biden’s security briefing.

Canceling security details for Dr. Fauci, John Bolton, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Canceling security briefings for former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Wouldn’t using both as resources on national security issues make better sense?

Removing General Milley’s portrait from the wall in the Pentagon. Petty, petty, petty.

The Insane:

Talking about “taking ownership” of Gaza. Most of us gasped when we heard this nonsense. U.S. foreign policy should not be hijacked to create real estate development opportunities.

Pardoning January 6 insurrectionists that injured police and destroyed property. One has already been shot dead by police while resisting arrest for a new crime.

Suggesting Canada should be “The 51st State.” Trump was not kidding.

The Panama Canal and Greenland. Imperialism is alive and well inside the White House (or, better said, inside the president’s brain).

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Why?

My analysis could go on. My point? The president has chosen to launch dozens of actions that conflict with the law, are poorly thought-out, alienate allies, and Make America Look Foolish Again.

Many of Trump’s illegal actions are already before the courts. Judges are issuing injunctions and blocking the implementation of many of Trump’s Executive Orders. Sadly, Presidents Musk and Trump have condemned the courts for their actions and will likely continue implementing their plans while appealing the court action.

An impeachment resolution (the first of many) has already been introduced in the House of Representatives. Trump should be lawyering up for another House impeachment, likely if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives in the 2026 elections.

A growing number of Americans are taking a look at what Trump has done in less than a month in office and do not like it. Widespread protests against Trump are coming, and none too soon.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

The world held its breath the morning of February 3, 2025. Trump’s tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, and Chinese goods were scheduled to go into effect. Stock markets around the globe panicked. Initial losses were in the billions. Only when Mexico’s President Claudia Scheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced they were deploying more troops at their borders with the U.S. as an additional deterrent to the smuggling of people and drugs in the U.S. did President Trump delay the 25 percent tariffs. 

Already Trump is pounding his chest, congratulating himself for bullying our neighbors. As I write this, China has responded to the 10 percent increase on Chinese goods with retaliatory tariffs and other actions. China also announced a new requirement for export licenses for five metals used for various industrial and defense industries.  A trade war with China may have begun. 

The markets believe that Trump was bluffing, but Trump will claim that his threats of draconian tariffs are real. And his apparent success at making Canada and Mexico offers they couldn’t refuse will only encourage Trump to threaten—and impose—more tariffs against more countries. 

Trump is doing what thugs do—resorting to threats instead of reason or dialogue to get his way. Trump expects to be declared a national hero for what he did, and what he threatens to do.

I am not only not ready to congratulate Trump for a brilliant foreign policy move; I’m ready to see him impeached for it. Trump has told Mexico and Canada that they are not our allies—they are our abusers. And Trump is using threats to end that abuse. If you were Prime Minister of Canada or President of Mexico, how long would it take you to get on the phone to President Xi and initiate talks at how best to respond to the U.S.?

President Trump came into office with peaceful borders with Canada and Mexico. That may come to an end soon. Canada logically might be thinking about allowing the Chinese to open a military base in Manitoba or Alberta. And Mexico, which already perceives itself to be economically exploited by the U.S., might want to embrace China, or even Russia.

Allies do not abuse one another. They do not propose annexing each other or ridicule their allies’ leaders. They work together for their mutual security and prosperity.

I went to graduate school in Toronto. I never once saw Canadians as adversaries or exploiters because they weren’t. Canadians, for the time being, are our friends. Instead of bullying and threatening them, the U.S. should work in tandem with them to address issues that seem to motivate Trump’s rash actions. (With Trump, you can never be sure what drives his actions.)

Trump seems to assume that Americans, or, in his mind, the ones who are not lunatics, support his actions. This will change if he throws the American economy into chaos which is what he appears to be doing.

Trump’s threats of massive tariffs should be seen as the actions of an idiot playing with a stick of dynamite. If Trump’s strategy, based on the aggressive and sometimes illegal practices of The Trump Organization in the real estate business, backfires, it may not be possible to “put the economy back together again” by simply repealing the ill-conceived tariffs. The memory of the tariffs and the recklessness of Trump will remain for many years. Our allies will not forget that America is capable of electing someone like Trump president and letting him recklessly abuse them.

It is too early to suggest that the world will end because of what Trump did on February 3, just as it is also naïve to suggest that his tariff threat worked with Mexico and Canada.

How will China respond to the Trump tariffs if an agreement is not reached to continue talks? More retaliatory tariffs are probable. China will also seek retribution in illegal ways, by increasing industrial spying and intellectual property theft and with additional displays of its military might. In other words, China’s reaction will be different than that of Mexico and China.

 It is not too early to start praying that Trump will either realize the mistake of using tariffs as a weapon or somehow be prevented from doing so again.

Trump is making the world a more dangerous place with his reckless tariff policy. American consumers will pay more for goods. American industry dependent on supply chains and markets in Mexico, Canada, and China will suffer. And the risk of a tariff war with China evolving into something worse is increasing. Thank you, Donald Trump. 

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

January 20, 2025 will go down in the history books, but not for the reasons Donald Trump thinks. His inauguration was a “shock and awe” affair, but the shock was at how much Trump’s narcissism has grown and how long his anger over his own mistakes has lasted. That anger has sent Trump on a journey to rewrite the sordid history of his own treason in the hopes that once he is dead, he will still be viewed by some as a great man.

Trump’s inauguration speech this year was as remarkable as that of 2017 but bests it in the depth of its lies and the sheer viciousness, expressed in how the speech treated President Biden and his administration. 

Trump implies that the Biden administration was one of the most consequential—in a bad way—in American history. To believe Trump, Biden, ridiculed for years by Trump as senile and incompetent, not only undid America’s last golden age (2017-2021) but most of the things that made America great before Trump’s first term. 

As president, Trump is entitled to his own perspective on history, but we are entitled to judge its veracity. Similarly, Trump won the presidency, in part, because he is brash and crude, but, as citizens, we have the right to condemn him when his behavior disgusts us. Trump tripped that wire in his inauguration speech.

President and Jill Biden, unlike Trump in 2017, chose to attend the inauguration of his successor despite the viciousness of Trump’s campaign. Starting in 2021, Trump systematically sought to destroy Biden’s presidency and credibility, both through personal attacks and by lying. Trump succeeded. Biden left office with a permanently broken legacy he doesn’t deserve. Biden had every reason in the world not to attend the inauguration.

Had Biden not been the fundamentally decent and patriotic man he is, he would have left Washington on January 19.

Here is what Trump told America in his speech with Biden sitting a few feet away:

“As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.

“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while, at the same time, stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad.

“It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions, that have illegally entered our country from all over the world.

“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders but refuses to defend American borders or, more importantly, its own people.

“Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina — who have been treated so badly — and other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago or, more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense. They’re raging through the houses and communities, even affecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country — some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer. That’s interesting. But we can’t let this happen. Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change.

“We have a public health system that does not deliver in times of disaster, yet more money is spent on it than any country anywhere in the world.

“And we have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.”

President and Jill Biden—and Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff—should have walked out on Trump.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

After watching several reruns of video of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, I decided not to write about it this week.  President Biden’s editorial in Monday’s Washington Post said enough about that sad day and the importance of remembering it.  In part, the president wrote:

“We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.

“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand.

“But on this day, we cannot forget. This is what we owe those who founded this nation, those who have fought for it and died for it.

“And we should commit to remembering Jan. 6, 2021, every year. To remember it as a day when our democracy was put to the test and prevailed. To remember that democracy — even in America — is never guaranteed.

“We should never forget it is our democracy that makes everything possible — our freedoms, our rights, our liberties, our dreams. And that it falls to every generation of Americans to defend and protect it.”

With President Biden’s words in mind, we need to move past January 6, 2021 and focus on the future.  Unfortunately, that future includes soon-to-be President Trump asking Congress to pass major parts of the  MAGA agenda in “one powerful bill.”  Trump wrote:

“Members of Congress are getting to work on one powerful Bill that will bring our Country back, and make it greater than ever before. We must Secure our Border, Unleash American Energy, and Renew the Trump Tax Cuts, which were the largest in History, but we will make it even better – NO TAX ON TIPS. IT WILL ALL BE MADE UP WITH TARIFFS, AND MUCH MORE, FROM COUNTRIES THAT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE U.S. FOR YEARS. Republicans must unite, and quickly deliver these Historic Victories for the American People. Get smart, tough, and send the Bill to my desk to sign as soon as possible. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

What is wrong here?  Everything. The Framers of the Constitution created a Congress to legislate the laws of the land and an Executive Branch of government to implement the law.  Trump is asking his slim majority in Congress to abdicate their responsibility to take his proposals, deliberate carefully on them, before passing them.

 If Congressional Republicans act on Trump’s none-too-subtle request, there likely would be no hearings, no analysis, no debate, and no opportunity for Democrats to offer amendments to one massive bill that would rewrite immigration policy, radically change energy policy, and extend the Trump 2017 tax cuts.  Unless the bill grants Trump massive, most likely unconstitutional discretion to implement the policies envisioned, the bill will be hundreds of pages long.

Congress must do its work as envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution.  They need to accept Trump’s proposals, analyze them for both programmatic and budgetary impact, hold hearings to receive input on the proposals from stakeholders, and consider the legislation in a deliberative manner.  Trump does not envision this.

On Monday, reports circulated that the President-Elect is inviting Congressional Republicans to Mar-a-Lago to discuss his plan of action.  Let’s hope that at least a few Republicans will not be blinded by the splendor of Mar-a-Lago.  Let’s hope they remember why they were elected to Congress and do their job.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.

 

I will leave it to others to recount the many challenges of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. I recall some of them myself, most notably buying a car with an 18 percent auto loan. I also recall Carter’s “national malaise” speech, delivered by the president wearing a sweater in front of a lit White House fireplace. Carter turned down the heat in the White House during the energy crisis and was ridiculed for his efforts to reduce energy usage, just as he was blamed for failing to rescue the Iran hostages.

By the time Carter left office, he was labeled a failure. I don’t remember him as one, even though the presidency of his successor, Ronald Reagan, was seen by many as a rescue from an America in decline.

I don’t dispute the successes of the Reagan presidency, but I also credit Reagan with consciously working to destroy Carter’s credibility during the 1980 campaign. In many ways, Donald Trump borrowed a page from Reagan’s 1980 win in his treatment of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and more than a dozen Republican primary challengers in three elections. 

I like to think that if Reagan were alive today, he might regret his harsh treatment of Carter because, on reflection, Carter wasn’t so much a bad president as an unlucky one. His heart was in the right place, and Carter was no clueless idiot. He just won the election at the wrong time.

My first experience with Carter came as a young Capitol Hill aide working under a moderate Republican Congressman who worked with Democrats and once told me that John F. Kennedy’s presidency had inspired him to enter politics.

President Carter’s Department of Justice proposed the reauthorization of two little-known federal statutes that sought to improve juvenile justice, prevent delinquency, and stem the problem of runaway and homeless youth. I worked with my Democratic Hill counterparts and Carter officials to contribute to a strong reauthorization bill that passed both houses of Congress with near-unanimous votes.

Sadly, such bipartisan cooperation is rare today. But in 1977, President Carter seemed to want to find common ground. Carter and his team, as well as the cooperation-minded Democrats on the Education and Labor Committee, made my job easy. Carter tried to work with Republicans even when it wasn’t necessary.

After the juvenile justice bill was approved by the House and Senate, President Carter signed it. A few days later, I received a letter from the White House, signed by President Carter, thanking me for my work on the bill. I had it framed, and it still hangs in my office.

I continued to work on bipartisan legislation until Carter left office, but that wasn’t my last contact with him. Later, in the early 1980s, I boarded a Delta flight from Washington National (not yet Reagan Airport) only to find President Carter seated two rows in front of me, accompanied by a pair of Secret Service agents. I nodded at President Carter as I passed his row.

I took my seat as the rest of the plane boarded. Then Carter did something unexpected. He stood up and asked the flight attendant if he could have a few minutes to greet the passengers before the plane backed off the gate. The answer was yes. Carter then personally greeted every passenger on the plane. Everyone was thrilled, especially me.

I followed Carter’s post-presidential work with admiration. No corporate boards for Carter. He preferred pounding nails for Habitat for Humanity, authoring books, and promoting fair elections in countries where voting fraud is a reality.

I will miss Jimmy Carter. I hope that as America prepares for the Carter State funeral on January 9, we will all think about his life. He deserved a Nobel Prize for his peace-building work, which resulted in the Camp David agreements. He also deserves respect and thanks for being a great man, including his work as our 39th president.

J.E. Dean writes on politics, government, and, too infrequently, other subjects. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s List on Medium and Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack.