I see that quite a number of Democrats are starting to realize the same things that I did some time ago: both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are awful candidates, Hillary Clinton is a terrible campaigner, and Trump could actually win.
I still have no idea what a Trump presidency would be like and I don’t think that anyone else does, either. Including Donald Trump.
There is one thing I can say with considerable confidence. A President Trump would have persistent problems with the federal bureaucracy, particularly the State Department and the Department of Defense. They simply don’t operate the way he does and, well, I don’t think there could ever be a meeting of the minds.
I continue to think that this will be an election campaign like no other of my lifetime and suspect that a major political realignment is in progress that will affect both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
It seems to me that so much of a Trump administration would depend on his cabinet and advisor appointments. As it looks more and more possible that he might pull off a win, I’m just hoping that some wisdom prevails there (meaning, that someone with some wisdom will have his ear when the time comes.)
One possibly redeeming thing I think I see in him is that I actually think he knows what he doesn’t know. I think if that weren’t the case, he’d be a lot more specific about his proposals- but instead they are just vague aspirations (though phrased in bold terms.) maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part, but I’m hoping this may be a mitigating feature because he might outsource the actual implementation to qualified people.
I think the dynamics of what’s going on is actually quite different. I’m of two minds. On the one hand, it could be that right now he’s in persuasion mode and is doing and saying whatever he needs to do to get attention and convince people. If that’s the case don’t expect any consistency.
On the other hand it may be that he sees everything as being within a negotiation and is just floating trial balloons. Consistency would actually work against him since it might tip his hand; he wants to maintain the strongest possible bargaining position.
I see those possibilities too but do t think they exclude my reading of him. I realize though the way I phrased it sounds as though the lack of detail is the only reason I’m inferring that he knows his limitations; actually I think I get this impression mainly from his background and history. He clearly sees himself as the big picture guy who walks out of the room to let other people ink out the details when he’s done hammering out a broad outline of a deal.
And to me this feels like the positive side or potential silver lining. Not knowing a lot of things, of course, can also lead to serious missteps but that’s where my hopes of good appointees comes in.
CS, you mean wise advisors like the people that have fucked the country up to begin with?
😉
Ellipsis. I anticipated that reaction and don’t disagree its a problem. In theory at least though there are some good people in the national security apparatus, diplomat corps, and the military and they might perform particularly well under an unconventional POTUS who isn’t beholden to the usual power brokers. I won’t pretend to know who these people are though, or even know for a fact that enough of them exist.
I think a political realignment of both parties is an assured outcome. However, what that realignment may look like is probably subject to sheer partisan speculation.
In the case of the dems I believe they are barreling down the social progressive (leftist) path as fast as they can go. The only roadblock will be a republican win which would chasten their zeal and speed.
As for the republicans and a Trump presidency, I think he would be more a mixture of conservative and liberal policy-making – much to the angst and ire of “real” conservatives. His foreign policy, for instance, appears to be much more of “mind your own business” philosophy. His healthcare language has a poignant acknowledge of including everyone, messaging even a nod to a more single payer type of system — another gas pain for conservatives. He’s also against some of the free trade agreements, wants to untangle and thin out rules and regs he sees as weighing down business growth. He has a long anecdotal history of being involved with blue collar workers — instances of preferring to shake worker’s hands vs those of people in suits; having his sons work on construction jobs at an early age etc. Herein, IMO, lies his appeal to not only white blue collar workers, but those of every ethnicity in this category. His disdain for intellectual elites is also why he is irritating and incurring the wrath of Kristol types and current leaders of the GOP.
Basically, Trump is not your average, cookie-cutter politician — being more of an ambitious man, playboy, having lots of warts, but also perhaps undefined possibilities should they be mined properly and augmented by what CStanley references as to whom he surrounds himself in his cabinet and close advisors.
“Its” always autocorrects to “it’s” except when I want it to do so.
CStanley,
“One possibly redeeming thing I think I see in him is that I actually think he knows what he doesn’t know.”
I don’t. Trump regularly proclaims himself the best at everything he does.
Moose breath: My impression is that the bluster and bragging are part of the character he plays, but in his actions he doesn’t display the arrogance of micromanagement.
I’m not voting for him (nor Hillary) and don’t wish to defend him, but to my surprise I don’t find inflated ego to be the problem it might seem at first glance with Trump.
CStanley,
“but in his actions he doesn’t display the arrogance of micromanagement.”
Well, then that one (and only one) type of arrogance he doesn’t display. He certainly displays the type of arrogance that says he can pick up anything immediately. He certainly displays the type of arrogance which says he knows more than experts in their fields.
And if you are saying you know that Trump’s public persona is only an act, then the next question is what is his real persona? And how would you know?
Obviously I don’t know, and am only sharing my impressions. I still have grave reservations about him based partly on the possibility that I’m wrong and partly on the probability that I’m right about other aspects of his character.
I have no clue what a Trump Presidency would be like, but make two observations.
One is that on the issues Trump maps as the most moderate candidate of either party this cycle (other than Kasich), which means on some issues he sometimes wants some more government and on others some less. His opponents all had pretty familiar breakdowns on the social/economic issues. I suspect Kasich scored more moderate because he was a governor, and may have been closer to Rubio as a Congressman. Trump btw/ appears to have moved on the issues from independent populist to conservative populist, so its not difficult to see some regression:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/could-an-independent-candidate-succeed-in-2016/
Trump is not moderate in tone and without any real governing experience its hard to imagine what he would do.
The other thing I found interesting while listening to countless mornings of “Morning Joe” in which the hosts appeared to be close to pimping for Trump, both Mika and Joe confessed that Trump’s public personae in this race isn’t the Trump that they know and they expect him to act differently in other contexts.
“A President Trump would have persistent problems with the federal bureaucracy, particularly the State Department and the Department of Defense. They simply don’t operate the way he does and, well, I don’t think there could ever be a meeting of the minds.”
I’m still waiting in vain for a government reformer. As a DoD civilian employee I live the dysfunction. There is zero interest in reform in the mainstream of both parties, perhaps this could be something Trump might try to take on, but I haven’t seen any indication he wants to. Additionally, a lot of the bureaucratic problems will require action from Congress.
“both Mika and Joe confessed that Trump’s public personae in this race isn’t the Trump that they know and they expect him to act differently in other contexts.”
I don’t know wha the dislike in private, but his public persona during the campaign seems pretty much the same his public persona for the last 30 years. Loud, coarse, vulgar, braggart. Let’s not forget that it was 1986 when the SPY magazine folks called him a short-fingered vulgarian.
Steve
The Democrats are old order conservatives, aka aristocrats. Republicans are (or maybe were) as well but have been less effective at getting it done when in power.
Now Republicans are the radicals attempting to smash a system of heavily centralized power while Democrats attempt to preserve and expand it. I have no idea where any of this leads as we’re in uncharted territory (a state completely unrealized by a certain blog and its commentors with whom we’re all familiar) but what has been thought “conservative” and “liberal” is gone out the window. Nearly all the young, whether self-identifying as conservative, socialist or liberal, are considerably further to the left than their elders and studies of political affiliation have indicated these things tend to remain stable over a lifetime.
I don’t think Trump is going to win, and his administration would be at best a George W Bush-level disaster.
But if he wins it’s because he sounds like this:
In a television interview, the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidential race also said Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, was using the newspaper to influence politicians in order to help his company on taxes.
“This [Washington Post] is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos, who controls Amazon,†Trump told Fox News. “Amazon is getting away with murder tax-wise. He’s using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don’t tax Amazon like they should be taxed,.â€
“He’s using the Washington Post … for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust,†Trump said, referring to the process whereby large US companies can be investigated for anti-competitive behaviour.
“He thinks I’ll go after him for antitrust. Because he’s got a huge antitrust problem because he’s controlling so much, Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing,†Trump said.