The Venezuela Raid Is a Lesson in Intellectual Regression

If you were dropped into the White House of the 1890s, much of Donald Trump’s presidency would look entirely unremarkable. Tariffs as a primary economic weapon? Routine. Casual threats of force against weaker neighbors? Common. Immigration restrictions framed in explicitly racial or cultural terms? Standard practice. Even the episodic flirtation with imperial intervention — such as the raid by US forces in Venezuela that seized President Nicolas Maduro — would have fit comfortably into the mental world of leaders such as James Polk, who launched a war to grab territory from Mexico, or William McKinley, who oversaw the US acquisition of overseas colonies after the Spanish-American War.

Trump isn’t an aberration; he’s a flashback. And because of that, his presidency illuminates a leadership problem that stretches far beyond his administration — as once powerful companies ranging from Eastman Kodak Co. to Nokia Oyj can attest.