As we awaken on this fascinating, grand immortal Monday morning, it remains as clear as it was on Friday, and no less surprising and curious. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican candidate to be the President of the United States.
And so, with him running against Hillary Clinton, if she is fortunate and thus not (yet) in prison by then, we have the very real situation of the candidates of both parties being people with extraordinarily high recognition among the voting and non-voting populace. More interestingly, for the most part, neither is as recognized, as one would normally expect, for their actual accomplishments in public office.
Hillary Clinton became a public figure by virtue of being married to the former governor of Arkansas and then, by virtue of the same fitful marriage, the first lady. In neither case was Mrs. Clinton known for anything she accomplished; rather, her most salient individual accomplishment was choosing to stay married to Bill Clinton through his serial "bimbo eruptions", strong allegations of sexual assault on other women, affairs and finally, the whole business of sexual relations with a White House intern.
If anything, Mrs. Clinton could have been also recognizable during that time for having been put in charge of an attempted overhaul of the nation's health-care system. That effort failed miserably on two fronts -- the public was particularly unwilling to have an unelected person, of no known prior achievement, be given the leadership of an attempted overhaul of a huge part of the economy, and not incidentally, the proposal simply stank. It stank for the same reasons that Obamacare stinks, and in both cases the Democrats' efforts to take over health insurance -- one that failed and one that passed -- led to huge Republican takeovers in Congress.
Oh yeah, then she became a senator from New York, where she had never lived for any length of time (thank you for the example, Bobby Kennedy) and did nothing of note in her time there, and then Secretary of State, where she did even worse by actually trying to do things, which generally failed, to the detriment of the USA.
Donald Trump -- has there ever been a time when we were not aware of Donald Trump? He was the billionaire; he was the guy who built those casino hotels in Atlantic City. He was the guy who took over the air shuttle that Eastern Airlines started up decades ago and renamed it the Trump Shuttle. His name was everywhere. It was on buildings, airplanes, businesses.
Then, he and his trademark hair were on TV, as the alpha-dog type on the TV shows "the Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice." He made us aware of the quirks and foibles of celebrities by putting them in situations where they had to work together, and showed us why people should be judged on accomplishment -- many of those celebrities were shown to be utter jerks (and others, but very few, including some of the winners, actually decent people, like Leeza Gibbons and John Rich).
Nowhere in all of those years of his celebrity and notoriety did any of us look at him and say "That guy ought to be president someday." Our view of the path to the White House was far different -- governors, senators, cabinet secretaries, a VP or so -- people who had gained professional familiarity with the workings of government.
Now, though, we are going to be confronting an election between two people whose rise to fame was not from lifelong careers doing public service (marriage alas, does not count). Donald Trump, if anything, played the opposite role -- he was the businessman who made the contributions to get preferential treatment for his business interests, not the one whose campaigns received them.
Hillary Clinton will be obligated in the campaign to make speeches and act in debates like a candidate would, because of her having been married to a president and her very-late-in-life term in the Senate and the Cabinet. Donald Trump, as we have seen, is completely free of obligation to the rules and conventions of a typical candidate. Moreover, while saying whatever he pleases, the more he does so, the more loyal his following. The fact that when he has his "Aha!" moments where the press "catches him", he refuses to apologize, well, that is an endearing trait.
In dealing with the expectation of voting for Mr. Trump in the general election, one of the things that intrigues me is that very distinction from the normal candidate. He does not have to do what he is expected to do. He can be a bit crude on stage. He can play the alpha dog role, the billionaire who gets his way.
But he is also learning to lean on the advice of people more expert in certain areas than he. Surely he did that during his business career, but as he gains the scope of what the presidency actually is, that lesson will pay dividends.
Particularly, I believe it will manifest itself in his choices -- less of a running mate, though that will be interesting, but in terms of Cabinet secretaries. The Republican campaign season presented 17 candidates, and when you are looking for people to run the actual daily workings of the Federal government, well, you could do a lot worse. Chris Christie as Attorney General? I could see that. Ben Carson at HHS? You get the idea.
More to the point, if Trump is really the conservative that he wants us to believe that he is, he could readily reach into the private sector. No career politician would take the role at Education or Energy with the mandate to dismantle the agency, but a Trump confidante in the private sector could. Remember -- Trump has repeatedly pointed to how cheaply his campaign was able to win in many states. That's precisely what we are hoping can be brought to the White House and the Federal budget.
His would not be a presidency we would forget any time soon. It really, really IS The Donald.
Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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