LOL! The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

I've set myself a goal of reading at least one biography of each of our presidents in order of their presidencies.  It's not like I'm charging through - I'm easily distracted.  Plus it's sometimes harder to find a good biography of some of our lesser known presidents than to find one of Elvis.  Which is annoying.  And sometimes the major issues of an administration just aren't that interesting:  I can stand about 2 pages of tariffs or monetary standards before I zone out.  The administrations of Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley involve hundreds and hundreds of pages on those subjects. 

Currently, I'm reading In The Days of McKinley, written by Margaret Leech in 1959.  As she writes about the post-Spanish American War turmoil over what to do with the Philippines she comments:

"One resemblance between McKinley and Lincoln was not alleged.  Both reduced their political enemies to a jumble of inconsistent accusations that they were absurdly weak and dangerously strong.  The hostile press in 1899 endowed the occupant of the White House with a dual personality:  on the one hand, an amiable, ordinary politician, befuddled by adulation; and, on the other, a self-willed dictator whose policy in the Philippines forecast his benevolent assimilation of the functions of Congress."

 Sound familiar?  Trump is an incompetent, yet he lays waste to the country and the Constitution by every possible evil.