"The Donald" Phenomenon

THE DONALD PHENOMENON

Donald Trump brings out a wide range of reactions when his name is mentioned. In some ways it is geographical.  in other ways it is jealous. in yet other ways it depends on whether you won money with him or lost it.

If New York is The Big Apple, the Donald has a deed on most of the orchards. When your business is real estate and casinos, along with a large number of smaller operations, you have to be bigger than life. 

Check out the tycoons who run the Vegas and Reno and Atlantic City Casinos. They are not a lot different from the Donald, with the exception that most of them have devoted themselves to one business, the casino business. Donald Trump loves all businesses and wants to succeed in as many as possible.

To the Donald, the casino business is just one of many cash cows that have seen him rise from bankruptcy to a net worth of $9 billion dollars. Yes, readers, that is billion with a “B”!

For those of you who see him as a clown, as an irresponsible fellow, as a publicity seeker or as someone less admirable than, lets say, a conservative bank president, let me remind you that he built his empire, stone by stone, brick by brick by hiring and managing the right people, by having dreams he followed, by knowing how to get the better of the bankers when they tried to restructure his loans, and how to climb not just out of bankruptcy but right up to the top again.

He has been married to beautiful women. He has beautiful children who are making their way successfully in the world. He has planes, yachts and some of the most sought after condominiums and apartments in New York City.

Is he sneaky, sly, manipulative, overbearing, sometimes outrageous in comment and appearance. Yes. Does he care if you don’t like that about him? No.  He measures himself as a businessman. It is the way the world often measures a man. 

Do you think he is not charitable? Do you suppose he is not a philanthropist. Interestingly, he is very generous. However, in that part of his life he does not grandstand.

People who wanted to be president of the United States called on him over the years. They would ask for advice, but what they wanted was donations. He has met them all. He was on all their lists. You don’t run for president without touching base with people like Donald Trump who can give you the help you need.

I think over the years he must have sized these folks up and said, in his conceited way, something along the lines of : I can do better than they can.

Interestingly, some candidates have recently released their success at fund raising. I think the last number I saw was from the Jeb Bush campaign and it was $150 million. Most candidates have to chase the money and that means being beholden to donors. It has ever been so. The Donald isn’t spending his time fund raising. He isn’t piling up obligations to donors. When you start out with your own $9 billion fund raising is not something you need to do. It frees you up to focus on other aspects of your campaign.

So lets look at that who is running for president this year who has accomplished more in his life than the Donald? While many have accomplishments, they are much more modest. On the other hand, we are more comfortable with them because they are more like the rest of us. And certainly some of them have significant experience in other important areas for any president, such as foreign affairs and defence matters.

Last week the Donald was running second in the GOP polls. As I write today he is running first. He will rise and fall, probably on remarks he makes from day to day. You see he does not mince words. He says what he thinks. And he will tell you why he thinks that.

His biggest problem is that people in the country tend not to trust people from New York, especially people who live large! His second biggest problem is that the news media will headline every misstatement, every windblown hair moment, and every time he says something critical about those who also want to be president.

So why is he running so well in the polls?

I posit that it is because the people are generally unhappy with what has happened to our country under the last two presidents. They don’t want to see a bunch of Iranians pushing us around. They witnessed that we backed all the wrong people in the Arab Spring. They know our enemies are using the weapons and tanks we left behind when we left those countries.

People are very fed up. They want more Teddy Roosevelt (speak softly and carry a big stick) and less Woodrow Wilson (lets work through a world organization.)

This was most recently highlighted when Trump had to move his appearance in Arizona at the Broadview Hotel to the city convention centre because the hotel could not hold all the people who wanted to attend.

I doubt that the Donald can overcome the forces at work against him. But I admit I like some of his ideas and I know he would be forceful if he were to downsize from living in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.  And I am hopeful that his success in the polls will wake up other politicians and force them into more aggressive stances when they talk to us about their plans.

I have been a moderate all my adult life. This irritates my conservative friends and my liberal friends and it puts me in a position of seldom seeing my choice for president win the office. I am unlikely to find a way to support the Donald in his quest but I am ever so hopeful the other candidates will see how the people have reacted to his strong approach to speaking out on issues of considerable importance to our nation and do less pussyfooting around those issues, being politically correct, worrying about taking a misstep by being honest in their comments. 

If the Donald is the tool that brings that about in the overly large GOP field of presidential wannabes, I will applaud his efforts.

Some may think of the Donald as the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum (there’s a sucker born every minute.) They are wrong. He is much more than the sum of his parts. And at the moment, he is making a lot of sense.

What I am happiest about is that what appeared to be a really boring presidential campaign now shows some chance of actually being interesting.