Then-President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump talk to members of the media during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 10, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Regarding the May 19 front-page article “Do 44 and 45 signal a new view of the presidency?”:

To suggest that former president Barack Obama and President Trump were both “nontraditional” candidates without traditional qualifications is just wrong. Mr. Obama had roughly equivalent qualifications to Abraham Lincoln, who, before running for president, represented Illinois in the House of Representatives for only a short time and had lost his Senate bid. Mr. Obama served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. Senate for several years before he won the presidential nomination. Mr. Obama, like Lincoln, was a lawyer; lawyers are steeped in the law and the legislative process through which laws are adopted. Mr. Obama was very much in the traditional mold of prior presidents. Breaking the racial barrier was the only way in which Mr. Obama broke the mold.

Mr. Trump was and is unqualified: never elected to office, never participated in government, had little knowledge of the legislative process or the Constitution. Mr. Trump did break the mold, in a bad way.

Voters were misled into choosing Mr. Trump with the false belief that he had successful businesses. Voters believed wrongly that Congress twiddled its thumbs during Mr. Obama’s last six years in office. But Republicans blocked Mr. Obama’s legislative initiatives — and many judicial appointments — so nothing was accomplished. Unfortunately, many voters did not understand the reality and thought Mr. Trump would be a solution, whereas the solution would have been to get rid of the obstructionist Republicans.

Susan McDonald, Washington