The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency

“[An] avalanche of repeated presidential absurdity. The reader realizes that this pattern is not part of the Trump presidency; it is the whole thing.” —Washington Post

“Americans should know that there are adults in the room. . . . And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.” —An anonymous senior administrative official in a New York Times op-ed, September 5, 2018

Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What’s more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump’s staffers, subordinates, and allies also describe Trump like a badly behaved preschooler.

Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he’s collected more than one thousand tweets. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take readers through the different dimensions of Trump’s infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. Drezner also shows the lasting impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy, exhorting the American people to think carefully about the person they elect to be the next commander-in-chief. He also shows how we must rethink the terrifying powers we have given the presidency.

“Occasionally funny . . . also overwhelmingly grim.” —New York Times

“[A] crisp, witty and highly readable philippic.” —New Statesman

© 2022 The University of Chicago Press (Ebook): 9780226714394

Release date

Ebook: December 22, 2022