The Trumpster

 

"Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said he remains convinced Clinton is ahead, somewhere in the range seen among the polling aggregators.

“There has been a closing that’s completely natural,” Sabato said. “Every four years, you have two national party conventions that produce a bounce of varying sizes. Clinton got a substantial bounce this year that lasted for a full month. It’s usually gone around Labor Day, and by then we’ll be where we should be, which is right around four to five points” for Clinton.

In a separate question in the Reuters/Ipsos poll that included alternative-party candidates, Clinton and Trump were tied at 39 percent. Seven percent supported Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, and two percent supported Jill Stein of the Green Party."  Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-idUSKCN1182PT

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Well, pilgrims...   Larry Sabato is the same fellah I watched on the TeeVee as he reported from a Republican Party convention in Richmond that George Allen, the tobacco chewing, spittoon using faux bubba who had just been nominated for governor of Vajinnyah would never be elected.  Never!  Well, fellow pilgrims, he was elected governor and then he was elected to the US Senate and would have been re-elected if he had possessed enough mother wit to abstain from calling a reporter a monkey because he was "a person of color."  Sooo ... I am unimpressed with the Sage of Charlottesville's opinion.

Actually, I think that HC's many faults as a candidate are steadily diminishing her chance of being president and commander in chief, as she correctly states the natures of the job.  I would now give her a 65% chance of winning.

Accordingly, this is a moment in which to consider the pluses and minuses of a notional Donald Trump in the White House:

Pluses.

IMO he is a risk averse entrepreneurial deal maker and closer.   He is loud mouthed but I would judge him to be timid.  I knew many such in my decade long business purgatory.   If you want to see his clones, watch "Shark Tank."  These monstrously wealthy people are all risk averse.  They are not in any way interested in backing concept companies, prototypes, and even functioning businesses unless they have thriving sales and low costs.  Trump is like that and would, IMO, avoid war, the ultimate risk.

He identifies with the United States as a country rather than identifying with a larger utopian world wide "market" under US domination.  This may have to do with his personal history in having emerged from recent immigrant beginnings.  From my POV people with a recent immigrant past tend to be like that.

IMO he would successfully re-negotiate the various trade deals that have cost the US dearly in jobs and manufacturing.

He would also IMO re-negotiate international defense agreements that have in their present form outlived their usefulness.

IMO once you get beneath the public rhetoric Trump's immigration policy would be much like Obama's.

Minuses.

He does not listen well and is really not looking for unsolicited  advice or disturbing information.

He is incurious and knows little of the world outside his narrow experience of deal making and project construction.

He knows little of the nature of government and the US constitutional limits on the power of the presidency.  IMO he would have to make someone like Pence de facto manager of the Executive Branch of the federal government because he could not make the machine run.

He does not seem to understand that in business terms there are no quantifiable profit centers in government, only cost centers.  Taxes and fiat money are not profit centers.  They are part of the costs inflicted by government.

His business experience does not include successful day to day management of a large and continuously functioning organization.  It is hard to imagine him managing General Electric for example.  I doubt that he has the persistence and self discipline to do that.

pl

Comments

[DC]

The latest IBD/TIPP poll has them virtually tied, with Gary Johnson at 12% and Stein at 3%.

http://www.investors.com/politics/clinton-and-trump-are-tied-in-latest-ibdtipp-poll/

The two-party results are basically the same as the Reuters poll captioned above. I'm only citing this one because the Libertarian candidate is climbing rapidly - I've got my fingers crossed for Johnson.

[BabelFish]

IMO, it would be entertaining. He would decide early on what activities he would focus on, such as renegotiating deals and hand pretty much all else to surrogates. The personal attacks and tweet storms would rain down on anyone who he viewed as obstructing his programs.

I take comfort in Pat's description of a risk averse president. 8 years without starting a major war? What will we do with all our leisure time? If he wins, it might be a good time to dump DoD stocks out of the old portfolio!

[morongobill]

George Catlet Marshall, he is not.

I doubt he will make the trains run on time either.

But he does seem to have a good grasp of our problems at home and abroad, and being a hands on executive type, should be able to hire the people to work things out.

For sure, he is the man for the job of making sure the stable gets mucked out.

The establishment has good reason to fear and loath him, he is coming for some of them when he takes office.

I think if it happens, we will find out just how many divisions the vaunted Deep State can bring to the battlefield.

My guess is, going up against a shrewd president, not that many.

[ked]

Does the fact Trump has never held an elected office temper one's confidence in predictions of what his election would yield?

[Jack]

Sir

Considering the pluses and minuses that you note of a Trump presidency I would take him in a heartbeat.

The pluses of risk aversion in meddling other people's affairs and having the primary focus on American national interests is exactly what is needed. His minuses can easily be overcome by appointing a team of good managers who can keep the trains run on time.

In comparison the Borg Queen would be an unmitigated disaster. Either she's mentally incapacitated or she's corrupt beyond redemption. Her proven track record of belligerence in foreign affairs is an existential threat to us. And the fact that she is fully bought and paid for by the globalist elites would mean that our working and middle classes will continue to be on the path to destitution.

[Edward Amame]

Babel Fish

"...hand pretty much all else to surrogates." Agreed. That would be Paul Ryan (and the House "Freedom" Caucus) and Mitch McConnell. And best of luck to us all after that.

[Jack]

DC

I doubt Gary Johnson or Jill Stein will garner as many votes as is being projected right now.

[Edward Amame]

I never got the huge bump after the Dem convention. Dems and Republicans are pretty evenly split nationally and there are only so many indys, so that bump suggested a lot of GOP support for HRC and that's just not believable to me at this point, not after his success in the primaries. It will be a close race and a lot will depend on the debates.

Currently 538 has Clinton's chance of winning about 70%.

[rjj]

which presidents have had one or more of the minuses 1 - 5??

what has been the worst case outcomes of same???

the question is an ignorant one .... apologies if it is also a stupid one.

[gowithit]

These polls from the Labor Day Weekend are all over the map!
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/updates/

Throw a dart at the board!

[kao_hsien_chih]

One potentially huge minus for a Trump presidency is his total lack of experience in the machinery of politicking and governance. Even if he seeks to be risk averse, he will have to be reliant on the many political operatives and bootlicks in and around DC with their own agendas in both domestic and foreign agendas. For all his bluster, Trump is not a very good administrator/manager: I always got the impression that he gets by on his excellent PR skills and some capable and loyal underlings that makes up for his lack of managerial talent even while running his business. At least based on how he ran his campaign so far, he completely lacks capable and loyal assistants in the realm of politics and, while he has had enough experience in business to be at least somewhat competent, his inexperience in politics and policymaking will spell trouble, a lot of it, for at least the first two years.

[steve]

His willingness to reopen trade deal does not mean other countries will want to do so. I suspect that he could find a way to abrogate at least some of those deals, but it is not clear that will bring back many jobs. US Manufacturing output is back above what it was in 2000, but we now have about 30% fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2000. We now have higher output, with fewer workers, so it is not really clear that the loss of jobs was all about the trade deals.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2014/09/02/reshoring-or-offshoring-u-s-manufacturing-forecast-2015-2016/#4811e0597419

[kao_hsien_chih]

I wonder if the first two minuses that Col. Lang attributes to Trump are also applicable to HRC.

I know (admittedly, not especially well--just acquaintances that I ran into in academic world) some people who were involved in the "Hilarycare" fiasco from the inside, and they absolutely hated the "dictatorial" and "secretive" style that HRC and her cabal ran the whole affair--to which they attributed most of its failure. HRC does not listen, and while she is very wonkish, that just means that she is excellent at compiling all facts and figures to browbeat others that she is right. (Continuing my theme of finding analogues between HRC and some German dictator from decades ago, I'm told that the latter was also a wonk: he was so obsessed with facts and figures that he "knew" what was going on with every aspect of German war effort than any general or bureaucrat, and could always badger them with how much detail he could spit out about numbers of tanks or stocks of fuel and raw materials--even though the dispositions of the actual stuff looked very different.) Basically, HRC is a different, perhaps even more obnoxious variant of the incurious person who listens to no one and brooks no disagreement. (I suspect the same is true now.) While she may be more informed on the machinery of US government, that makes her a schemer who is constantly looking for ways to expand her political power through clever manipulatino of legal loopholes--perhaps even more dangerous than Trump's dangerous ignorance.

[Laura]

Col. et al--As you focused on the foreign policy/foreign adventure probabilities of a Trump presidency, I would like to submit this reasoning that I came across today. Yes, his opinion is definitely NOT in favor of Trump but I found the questions interesting...especially the conspiracy theory question. What would that kind of a Presidency be like...if you basically do not believe that most people are good and that history can be explained by conspiracy theories, how then as President, would you try to influence history? John Wilson is much less convinced of a "peace dividend." For your consideration:

John K. Wilson is the author of Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire (www.trumpunveiled.com), to be published on Sept. 1 by OR Books. His previous books include The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, and Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies.

What kind of military/foreign policy do you think Trump would follow as president?

Trump’s approach is violent isolationism, which is likely to cause numerous wars. It’s well known among Trump’s critics that he’s lying when he says that he opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and pretends that he was a leader of the anti-war movement. What’s less publicized is the fact that Trump had consistently supported, from 1991 to 2003, invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein—the very thing that he now says was a horrible idea and a key reason why Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be elected president. That means Trump is not only far to the right of Clinton, but he’s also far to the right of Dick Cheney. Trump wasn’t reluctant to start a war in Iraq; he was only disappointed that we hadn’t invaded Iraq long ago. The Never Trump movement understands that Trump generally follows the conservative line on judicial appointments and domestic policies, and that Congress can check his deviations. It’s foreign policy where Trump provokes fear from the right, not because he’s a pacifist, but because he’s an unpredictable lunatic, and the presidency today has vast unchecked powers beyond the borders of the United States.

What do you think a President Trump would have done if he'd been in office on 9/11?

Because Trump’s foreign policy is to the right of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, he would have done everything they did, and maybe more. Would Trump have responded to 9/11 with nuclear weapons? It’s possible. He absolutely refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons to kill vast numbers of innocent people if it suits his military desires or goals of revenge.

How do you think his penchant for talking up conspiracy theories would play out in a Trump presidency?

Some of the worst moments in the history of American presidents were caused by paranoia: the Watergate break-in and the cover up was an outgrowth of Nixon’s paranoia, and how his mentality spread throughout the White House. Trump has already created his own version of Nixon’s Enemies List by banishing numerous news outlets from his events. Trump’s paranoia is far worse than Nixon’s, and Trump goes far beyond paranoia to a general belief in conspiracy theories even when they don’t involve him. Trump became the leader of the birthers not merely because he wanted to appeal to the racist far right, but also because he genuinely embraces conspiracy theories. Conspiratorial thinking is dangerous for many reasons. It shows irrational reasoning and someone largely incapable of weighing evidence and determining actual causes for problems. Science, to a conspiracy nut, is just another conspiracy, which is why Trump always calls climate change a “hoax.” Conspiracy theorists also tend to see enemies everywhere. Since Trump has vowed to destroy America’s enemies, and he regards any critics as his personal enemy, there is a danger that Trump will be a traditional authoritarian leader, conflating criticism with treason. Many people imagine that the American system of checks and balances prevents a terrible abuse of presidential power. But the truth is that we’ve never tested it by electing a conspiracy nut as president.

[Walrus]

Trump does not need experience in the minutiae of Government. He needs to have experience in hiring and managing people that do have that experience - which I think he may have.

As a revered female director of a very large bank told me when I asked her what she does: "My job is to make sure that the people who work for us can succeed at what they have to do".

My concern with HRC is the reverse - a tendency perhaps to try to micromanage stuff she is interested in and ignore the rest.

[turcopolier]

walrus

Maybe, but I don't think so. My experience indicates to me that the truly ignorant elevated to high position fear and disregard the skilled whom they themselves may have hired. pl

[turcopolier]

laura

IMO that is all baloney. He no more has ideology than any of his kind of business people have. pl

[Edward Amame]

kao_hsien_chih

Maybe she learned something from her experience in HillaryCare. I've read numerous reports where peers and staffers talk about what a great listener she is. That's unusual to find in a pol. Probably has pluses and minuses in a president though, depending on whom he/she's listening to.

[Allen Thomson]

> We now have higher output, with fewer workers...

Isn't that what "productivity" is about? Isn't productivity supposed to be a good thing?

Of course, jobs lost to productivity in sector X are supposed to be regained in a newly created and better-paying sector Y, no? Like iron workers and machine tool operators become even better paid computer programmers, for instance.

I remain to be convinced.

[Tyler]

Sir,

As someone as the bayonet end, as it were, of Obama's immigration policies, I can tell you in the strongest possible terms you could not be more wrong on their policies being mostly the same.

[Tyler]

DC,

Johnson is Hillary Clinton with weed legalization.

[David Lentini]

He does not listen well and is really not looking for unsolicited advice or disturbing information.

He is incurious and knows little of the world outside his narrow experience of deal making and project construction.

This may not be such a minus, given the mind-set of the political science "technocracy" in ascendance. Of course, they'll continually peck at any sense of inadequacy in order to goad him into acting rash. But we really don't need any more world building.

[turcopolier]

tyler

I don't see the difference. DT says he will deport criminal aliens. Obama is doing that. DT says he will stop "catch and release." Well, this will require a lot more detention facilities. Who is going to pay for that? The Mexican president said that they will help with improvements in border security. There already is a lot of barrier. How much more is he going to build, the whole border? This is going to create an ecological nightmare out in the Sonoran Desert as well as costing a whole lot of money. Lastly and most importantly he said in his Phoenix speech that after his administration stabilizes the border situation, they will then sort through the 11 million or 16 million or however many to decide what to do with them by category and on an individual basis. Giuliani said the same thing today on TV. To me that indicates that the talk about deporting them all is just political BS. pl

[kao_hsien_chih]

Possible, but something that the voters have the right to demand some demonstration thereof. Most "peers and staffers" who have claimed such publicly are known political allies and current and former subordinates who are in line for high positions in the administration should HRC win presidency, as far as I know. I heard about the HilaryCare experiences in private settings where my acquaintances had no reason to be dishonest. The way HRC ran the State Dept (email server being one example of several) doesn't inspire too much confidence.

[James Loughton]

Your story regarding the female director brought to mind an interview I saw with one of Trump's long time female managers who was now out on her own in the development business. The reporter asked "what's it like to have Mr. Trump as a boss?" Her reply was immediate and emphatic. "He's not a boss, he's a LEADER!" She explained that Trump assigned his people a project and them gave them complete authority to manage it. She said his role was as a mentor and cheerleader to his team members. He would check in to encourage his people and ask if there were any further resources they needed, and how he could help with any problems, but did not micro manage.