Saturday, July 09, 2016

I'll let you know after it happens

Donald Drumpf the Pancake Führer. Painting by Dan Lacey.
Did you hear how Trump refuses to commit to serving as president should he get elected?

Presented in a recent interview with a scenario, floating around the political ether, in which the presumptive Republican nominee proves all the naysayers wrong, beats Hillary Clinton and wins the presidency, only to forgo the office as the ultimate walk-off winner, Mr. Trump flashed a mischievous smile.
“I’ll let you know how I feel about it after it happens,” he said minutes before leaving his Trump Tower office to fly to a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
I don't see anybody taking this seriously (BooMan gives it a try, but not very hard), but I have the strangest sense he really means it, however trollish his smile may be.

This is because of something else that came out Thursday, not from him but from Paul Manafort, speaking with Howard Fineman at HuffPost about the importance of the vice-presidential selection. I like the way Cristiano Lima put it for Politico:
Trump isn't interested in playing a hands-on role in the White House, Manafort said — that's the job of the vice president.

“He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do. He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO," Manafort said. “There is a long list of who that person could be ... and every one of them has major problems.”
He might be willing to be the Head of State—like the president of Germany or the queen of England—but not the Head of Government. He'll fly around from photo op to photo op, taking meetings and looking at things, and perhaps relaxing at the local golf course, though it may be he doesn't like playing at courses he doesn't own. I don't see him making a lot of speeches—what would he have to say, once he's elected, other than that everything is fine now?—or phone calls with his fellow leaders at home and abroad. He doesn't like the constraints of doing these things properly, reading from the TelePrompTer or submitting to direction. He doesn't have the obedience training of a Ronald Reagan. He'll spend a lot of time on the Twitter denouncing his critics, of course.

It doesn't make the prospect of a Trump presidency any less dangerous. As Steve M keeps telling us, he'd sign every piece-of-shit legislation a Republican Congress handed him; and you can imagine how much he'd enjoy announcing that it's the best, classiest legislation that's ever been seen, completely unlike the loser legislation you get from most administrations. He'd also give plenty of opportunity for the development of court cabals, kitchen cabinets, secret government in the hands of a chief of staff Manafort or vice president Gingrich or acting first lady Ivanka.

What he won't do is make any focused attempt to keep any of those "promises". No nukes for Saudi Arabia and Japan, no torture, no renegotiated NAFTA, no replacement of Obamacare, no deportations, no Wall. That's not why he says those things. He can't even be sure he's going to take that oath. Like Ben and Lauren might never get married. What he wants to do is to be acclaimed the winner in this most magnificent of all semi-scripted TV shows. He has no further plans.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

16 comments:

Jim Snyder said...

ugh. Would you be so kind as to provide a trigger warning for fanzine links, SVP? I had no idea who Lauren and Ben are. I'd prefer to stay innocent.

Oh, right ... Trump. [yawns]

Trump cannot win in November absent an external forcing event, and in view of his lack of interest in being anything other than what we see on display daily, I'm not sure he could win even with a second 9/11 event.

Hillary choking on a pretzel in late October ... mebbe.

Philip Bump at WaPoop points out that Hillary leads Trump among white women by a substantial margin. The latinousa (?) poll has Hillary leading Trump 80-13. IIRC Trump is single digits among blacks.

Ed Rodgers, GOP apparatchik, wrote in the WaPoop a day or two ago that the GOP congressional campaign staff has concluded that the 2016 presidential campaign is already lost. (Not in so many words, but it's easy to see the message between the lines.)

It seems to me that the interesting question is the spread.

And the downballot races.

My two units of non-national currency.

sdhays said...

"He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO."

Yeah, that's Donald Trump, alright. The only thing that has truly taken me by surprise in this entire campaign is Trump's ability to stick with it. I really didn't think he had the stamina or attention span to make it this far. I underestimated just how much of a charge he gets out of talking out of his ass.

sdhays said...

I'll also add that it's fascinating how much Republicans like Presidential candidates who don't actually want to do the job and promise to "delegate". George W. Bush was going to be our first "CEO President", as if not being really involved or knowledgeable about actual stuff going on was a good thing. Now I guess they consider W as an example of micromanagement.

rclz said...

Yea, hiring smart people around you translates to Cheeny and Rumsfeld and a whole host of people who should be in The Hauge. We've all seen that movie before.

Feud Turgidson said...

"Chairman" ... nah: executive producer - and more.

Also, part of the premise of The Apprentice is he'd be better than anyone he chose as winner - that in real reality word, he'd pick himself, because it's just obvious he's some much better than any of them, or anyone else could be. So: executive producer, star, winner, and ... Mister Universe.

Look, all those girls are hot, for a while. Not very long, really. Then, we all see it, they let themselves go. It's disgusting. It's not a good business choice, either. So then they're all flabby and and floppy and everything's flapping around and spilling out. Not a very pretty sight at that point. I'm just telling it the way it is. And, this is important, so listen up, this is the maybe the most important thing of all: They're not really exciting anymore either. Listen: Trump knows; you know he knows, right? If anyone knows, it's Donald Trump; ask anyone, I don't care. But you'll never see Trump wasting has assets like that. Besides, who's smarter, who's more successful at everything, really, and interesting. Exciting? Think about it: look, he doesn't even really try: if he tried, if he actually put his mind to it, it would really be something to see, I guarantee. Plus if he wasn't always giving money to charities. But if he really even tried, who'd be the richest, be honest now. Richest and smartest: than means most exciting, right? That's the most sexy, tell the truth. I mean, in the long run.

Buford said...

I don't know why the gop is so upset...they are getting that presidential hand that will sign anything the gop congress puts forth...*sigh*, I am tired of all the lies, and hate, and everything the republicans stand for...

Ken_L said...

Buford I'm sure most of the asserted GOP upset is purely because they think they're going to lose an election they were confident they'd win. If they believed Trump was going to win, the "principled resistance" would pretty much vanish and they'd be salivating at the prospect of a president who'd sign anything Ryan and McConnell put in front of him.

Victor said...

Daffy Duck:
"Just shoot me now!!!"

flourish loan said...
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Priest Fadhili Chausiku said...

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Blackstone said...

WTF?! Weirdest spam posts I have seen for awhile.

SDHays- it occurs to me, they said they same thing about the sainted Reagan, that he would have good advisors. So they have used that meme twice and its worked twice. Maybe Mencken was right, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American peopple.

Ten Bears said...

That's popped up more than a couple times, Steve usually wipes them. May well be the Best Trolling Ever!

Trump. May well be the Best Troll Ever.

KenRight said...
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KenRight said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Yastreblyansky said...

It looks like I have more power than I realized! I've deleted the "Euro-American white populist" troll and one of the spam letters (the other one is too much fun to kill). Everybody else, thanks for the comments! Sorry about The Bachelor, Jim (I had to look it up, you know, it is not part of my regular reading). Feud, the picture of Trump thinking he really ought to be Miss Universe himself is the best thing ever.

Yastreblyansky said...

Make that "Euro-American right populist" (as if there was a difference).