MAYBE TRUMP IS JUST RUNNING AMERICA LIKE A BUSINESS (HIS)

A New York Times story reports that the president of the United States watches TV day and night ...

For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day -- too much in the eyes of some aides -- often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon.

... gives tours of the White House when he should be getting up to speed on important issues ...

To pass the time between meetings, Mr. Trump gives quick tours to visitors, highlighting little tweaks he has made after initially expecting he would have to pay for them himself.

... obsesses over the White House decor ...

For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.

... assesses how well he's doing based on polls ...

Chris Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and an old friend of the president’s, said: “I think, in his mind, the success of this is going to be the poll numbers. If they continue to be weak or go lower, then somebody’s going to have to bear some responsibility for that.”

... didn't read one of his administration's most controversial executive orders before signing it ...

But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council....

... and knocks off work earlier than the typical entry-level employee in many businesses:

Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter.... When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.

In response to this, Kevin Drum writes:

In other words, he still thinks he's the star of a reality TV show. He cares about his image and his ratings, but that's about it. When it comes to making America great again, he expects his staff to take care of things.

Is reality TV his only reference point for being president? I think that's part of it -- but I suspect that this is how Trump ran his entire business life, at least in the years since he stopped being a builder and focused on franchising his name. I think he walked into his office every day regarding himself as the Big Think guy, the man with the sweeping vision of what Trumpism means. There'd be a business opportunity and he'd absorb the broad outlines of it and then weigh in -- and after that he'd hand over the details and the actual difficult work to smarter, harder-working people, often including his adult children. Remembder, he was operating in a limited number of fields he'd gotten to know well -- TV, trademark franchising -- so he couldn't make too many mistakes no matter how inattentive he was to the details. Besides, banks wouldn't let him screw up too badly -- many wouldn't lend to him at all, and the ones that still did business with him could withhold funds if he proposed to do something reckless.

So he didn't need to work very hard. He was coasting. He could do a season of The Apprentice -- or run for president, for that matter -- and his labors weren't missed.

So of course he's lazy and detail-averse. When's the last time he needed to break a sweat?