Being "For the People"

So I was half-watching the news yesterday, and the host was doing a little regular piece where he goes around the country to a diner and chats politics with the people having breakfast.  It's cute, at least as long as the diners are able to make coherent sentences, and not leave long seconds of dead air.

So the host is chatting with a very old lady about things and she was mentioning that she remembered Franklin Roosevelt.  He was a good president, the lady recalled, and got us through the War and all.  Then the host asked the same lady -- who had to be well into her 80s -- "... and what do you think about President Trump?"

The lady was pretty candid right back.  "I like him", she answered.  "Why do you like him?", the host asked back, and she was present and conversational in her reply.  "Because he is for the people."

"For the people."

I hadn't been really, really watching the segment that hard, but that answer stopped me a bit, enough even to decide to write a piece.

Donald Trump ran on a fairly straightforward platform.  Fix illegal immigration, by building the wall and activating the Border Patrol back from the Obama "Let 'em all come in" era.  Supercharge the economy by cutting personal and corporate tax rates, and simplifying the code.  Revitalize our military and put forth a stronger image befitting the leader of the free world.  Reinstate the friendships with our allies, which were destroyed during the Obama era.

Obviously, President Trump has a fairly large ego.  In that, he is no different from presidents and other leaders in my lifetime; the difference, such as it is, is a difference in style in how that ego is expressed.  The president has a substantial view of his own abilities and will let you know it.

What is different, as I see it, is in the platform.  Barack Obama was all about his "legacy", how he would be viewed after leaving office.  It mattered not if he were to lie about what his efforts would lead to, that people would be paying huge increases in health insurance, or if our allies no longer trusted us or our adversaries no longer feared us -- as long as the toady press would make it sound like Obama was a wonderful president.

Donald Trump is a massively different character.  But that old lady in Florida, who thought so much of Roosevelt, had it right about Trump.  Politically, Donald Trump is actually "for the people", in that his policies are clearly to enhance the lives, the income and the safety of American citizens -- protecting our borders, lowering our taxes, helping our servicemen and veterans, improving our access to quality, affordable health care.

There is nothing innately helpful to President Trump personally in any of that.  And those policies all are intended to make life better for the people, for the citizens of the USA.  So I suppose it is reasonable to infer that the one guy who clearly did not need the job is, for once, doing what he felt he needed to do because the people needed a better approach to governing -- to, as he so often characterizes it, drain the swamp.

I would not be so bold as to think there is not a healthy dose of ego in his altruism, but the more I consider it, the more reasonable is it that the man is, indeed, doing this "for the people."  Because he (rightly) believes he can do what needs to be done, better than the other 16 people on the primary debate dais last year, and certainly better than anyone the Democrats could trot out (or in Hillary's case, prop up).

President Trump has far less to gain by stepping away from his business empire for years as president, than he would have by continuing to run it.  He already did the nation a great service by preventing the corrupt Hillary Clinton from buying the presidency.  It really does make sense that there is a surprising proportion of altruism in his approach, and a surprisingly minimal proportion of personal gain.

"For the people."  I think the old lady was pretty much spot-on.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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