What history might say about Trump and his Tweets

I think this might be one of the first posts within this blog that I get to nerd out a little bit in the area of my formalized education.

I am a political scientist-- I might not be practicing or writing books or journals or articles, but I have three degrees in Political Science. When asked why I have those degrees (usually with a tinge of sympathy because I am not working in the field), my response is just this. I chose to study what I wanted to learn, not what I wanted to work in per say.

I heard once in one of my classes Politics is personal and the personal is political.  I am fascinated by government and by all that it entails. When I think about my education, I wanted to further my understanding in a subject matter. We have this idea in education that what we learn, we must practice. That degree I hold, must be the field I am working in, there are some degrees that that is very much true and there are some degrees that I honestly don't think that this way of thinking makes sense to continue anymore--- but I digress- that could be a topic for another day.

Anyway, I have been playing around with the thought of this Trump presidency and drawing some similarities to themes of previous presidents. One theme that resonates the most is this tension of the Trump Administration and the media. It immediately calls to mind Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. 

Thinking about both places in time, you have new mediums and forms of communication that are growing. For FDR, radio became a new outlet and in an effort to control the narrative, he used radio to go directly to the people. To give them the space to hear from him. We know that this was largely for his benefit to gather support for his New Deal proposal. But it really was a unique way for a President to "reach the people."

Much in the same way that you look to our current climate. You have social media and really Twitter that is a space in "connecting people" and while the intention can be questioned to a degree. Political history will have an opportunity to draw a comparison with this current Administration and it's use of "creating their own narrative" in what has been created as a tension with the media today.

Whether we agree with it or not, Trump and the Trump Administration are using social media and particularly Twitter in a similar fashion that FDR did with Fireside Chats. The impact however is still yet to be written.

But for this Poli Sci Nerd, it does add some different details of thought.