With the presidential election coming up I guess of my thoughts about President Trump. I think I'm a moderate Republican, more towards the right in terms economy and less government and more towards the left in terms of social issues. In general I've voted Republican except for the president where I use the debates to decide on who I'm voting for (and for California governor where the Republican candidates look like idiots because no one competent wants to run) and previous elections I've voted:

2000 - Al Gore (lost to George W Bush)
2004 - George W Bush (beat John Kerry)
2008 - Barack Obama (beat John McCain)
2012 - Mitt Romney (lost to Barack Obama)
2016 - Hillary Clinton (lost to Donald Trump)

In 2016 I voted for John Kasich in the primaries because I didn't want an amateur as the Republican candidate. I think I watched a couple of the primary debates and was more impressed with Marco Rubio but he dropped out well before California primary and even Kasich dropped out a few days after I mailed my ballot.

The debates went Hillary Clinton's way. She had better answers to the issues though probably Trump lost more points because I disagreed with his stances (he did not come off as supportive of the military) and he was very rude (which he repeated to the nth degree in this year's first presidential debate).

So now we have four years of presidency and frankly I have way too many criticisms of his tenure. I think my biggest problems are increasing corruption in his government; his pettiness against anyone who he doesn't like; that he doesn't come across as wanting to help the whole country, just the people that support him; that he ignores process and bureaucracy (which I know many people don't like those but I'm a (small e) engineer and process and structure are very important); that he says whatever his current audience wants to hear and freely contradicts himself... ok, I'll stop but there are so many things over the course of four years.

And I really hate the way he corrupted the Republican party. Yes, it was already going more and more extreme as they tried to regain power in the federal government but under Trump federal-level Republicans got nasty. Maybe I'm looking through rose-colored glasses but the Republicans of my childhood were stately. Conservative but they knew that was the right course for the whole country. Now we have the Republicans of the last four years who just want to tear things down and being very short-sighted. We've become an f-you party. And conversely it's the Democratic party that is showing class and empathy.

I really hope Trump doesn't get re-elected but even if he doesn't I'm not sure the Republican party can be restored.