I would.
4.1% GDP growth and 3.9% unemployment. Dow 25,000 and the S&P 500 at over 2,800. Millions of jobs created amid sky-high consumer and business optimism.
Not just one, but two Supreme Court Justices who will uphold the constitution with clarity and fidelity, not to mention the dozens of lower court judges who will do the same.
A military that has the resources it needs to properly protect our country, with a budget at now about $700 billion. ISIS scattered and about eradicated, as peace seemingly holds with North Korea, Russia, and Syria.
Trade deals being renegotiated and a Republican Party better in touch with its base. Tax cuts that give Americans more money in their pocketbook as well as an America more assertive on the world stage.
No wonder a recent poll by the respected Rasmussen Reports has President Trump’s approval rating at 50%, higher than President Obama’s at the same time into his Presidency.
With the 2018 midterm elections coming up quite soon and the 2020 Presidential election not too far off after that, it is doubtless that President Trump’s administration has materialize in significant and tangible benefit to the American people.
The many concerns that many of the talking heads spouted before the 2016 election, ranging from him destroying our economy to starting World War III, have not materialized and show little signs of doing so.
Many of us took a leap of faith in voting for then-candidate Donald Trump. Even if we resonated with his message and did not believe the lies and distortions piled upon him, he still was a very new path compared to the traditional Presidents we had been used to for many years.
Besides being not a politician but rather a businessman his whole life he also broke down many of the norms that had traditionally governed our political discourse and electoral process in the past.
He did not react from the typical politician playbook we had been so conditioned to. His campaign seemingly defied the laws of physics, soaring in the polls despite gaffes, media attacks, and with nominal funding compared to his well-moneyed opponent campaigns.
He did not back down but fought. He called out things bluntly, sometimes too much, but in a way that clearly the American people had been long wishing for.
Despite that, we were told day after day by the media until election night how Trump had an astronomical chance of winning, with The Huffington Post’s “poll of polls” having famously put Hillary Clinton’s chances at over 98%.
Few of us agreed with everything – or even most – of what then-candidate Trump proposed, did, or said, me included. But when the final choice came down to it many of us understood that, despite our reservations, our country had begun drifting too far from the constitutionalist republic we have long been and we needed to reign in a far-left that would only be emboldened otherwise.
Then on election night that voice in our hearts saying that there just may be a chance was answered and we saw then-candidate Trump become the President-Elect and then President. Many of us undoubtedly remember that night clearly, as it was an epiphany in how right our prayers had been and how wrong the seemingly in-the-know naysayers were.
President Trump looks quite certain to run for re-election in 2020, despite the initial naysaying by his critics that he would call it quits after just a few months of his Presidency or seek a quiet return to the real estate and media sectors. While some Never Trumpers still hold out for a primary challenge I think most of us know that remains just amusing, and no more, in a party where the President retains an almost 90% approval rating.
Given the current trajectory of our country, I remain happy with my vote for then-candidate Trump and look forward to voting to re-elect President Trump in 2020. Challenges and uncertainty undoubtedly remain, as they do with any President.
Yet many of us now look at these upcoming elections with clearer eyes and knowing hearts, as the fateful events of 2016 so proved that all the multi-factor models and chorus opinions of the then-pundits did not compare to our knowledge of how this country truly worked and its people really felt.
2016 was monumental. 2020 undoubtedly will be the same.