How much is Trump responsible for?

I spent the last week in Paris, which for me makes for days of restaurants, movies, bookstores, and museums. When I was living in Cambridge and its environs in the 1970s this area was a lot like it, but it isn't anymore. The break allowed me to think more clearly about the state of our own nation, and to perhaps get a better look at the great, ever-changing forest of American history, zooming backwards from that one orange-colored tree that so dominates our lives. Yes, our country is in a terrible mess, and yes, we have a president who is truly, in his own way, beyond compare. But how much of it is exactly his fault, and how many of our current misfortunes can we trace directly to him? It's an interesting question.Trump cannot reasonably be blamed for the transformation of our economy over the last fifty years or so. He was not even a key figure in making it happen, nor does he seem to me have benefited much from it before he entered politics. The New Deal era began to die in the…