Vote ONLY for someone who has failed and has LEARNED from failure. This limits the field to Trump, Cruz and Carson.
–Chet Richards, in a response to this post at Belmont Club
Trump
What should the next President be like ?
This is not the same as who the President should be. Richard Fernandez has some ideas on what he (or she) should be like.
let me suggest that only four things matter in selecting a man (or woman) to face a challenge whose present dimensions cannot be predicted. For purposes of debate, let these four qualities in descending order of importance be:
1.An ability to face the facts, however unpleasant they may be.
Yes, this is critical and we have had enough of liars and careerists. Is Trump a liar ? I don’t know.
2. An unswerving patriotism. This is not the same as a sincere feeling of love or empathy for America, though that is good. In this context it means the willingness to share the fate of the principals of which he is an agent.
Yes, we are ruled these days by elites who do not plan to share any pain. This is unrealistic but they have been raised to believe they can avoid unpleasant reality. What do we do about this ?
3. Nerve. This is the quality of grace under pressure who no one, unless he has the misfortune to be tested, can be sure he possesses.
Yes, the only real test is the reality and then it is too late. A few have tried to analyze this, and it is not easy.
some individuals did not panic because their body naturally protected them.
Unlike the majority of people who were flooded with a stress hormone, they had much lower levels and also showed signs of another hormone that actually calmed them down.
He referred to Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot of the aeroplane that was successfully landed on the Hudson River in New York last month, as an example.
“There are some individuals who when confronted with extreme stress their hormone profile is rather unique,” he said.
“It doesn’t reach the same peak as the rest of us. So we’re all ready to scream in our chairs, but there are certain individuals who just don’t get as stressed.
“Their stress hormones are lower and the peptides that down-regulate that stress are higher, so you can see in action the hormonal regular system really hitting overdrive.
“Certain people are cooler under pressure and they perform very, very well during these periods of time.”
In his novel, Once an Eagle
In the movie “Patton” an incident was described in which George S Patton Jr attacked three men who he believed to be kidnapping a woman.
Does Trump look like the young Patton ? They seem to have similar expressions.
My own life has been lived as a surgeon and there are surgeons who take beta blockers to deal with tremors caused by high levels of stress hormones. I have never had a problem with anxiety during surgery but, of course, I am not the one under the knife.
4. Intelligence. This is important, because it determines basic competence. But it surprisingly the least important attribute in this list. Intelligence, though rare, is not nearly as hard to find as the 3 characteristics above. You can find staffers who can give you intelligent advice. You cannot find staff to give you a character that you do not possess.
This is so obvious that it should not need to be said but we are ruled by staffers.
What do we make of all this ? I don’t know. Trump is an interesting character and I have no idea how he would function as president. I do think we might get a chance to find out. We should know more in a few weeks.
Conditional Probabilities
Still, it takes a lot to believe that Donald Trump could win more electoral-college votes than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders and that his Supreme Court appointments would have Justice Scalia’s respect for the lives of his voters. Mr. Trump’s nominations for anything sit as a mystery.
Before Justice Scalia’s death, some might have said the Trump option was a risk worth running. The risk now has become too high.
He has a point.
Trump and China
Trump has, famously, gone after China on its trade policy.
In January 2000, President Bill Clinton boldly promised China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization (WTO) “is a good deal for America. Our products will gain better access to China’s market, and every sector from agriculture, to telecommunications, to automobiles. But China gains no new market access to the United States.” None of what President Clinton promised came true. Since China joined the WTO, Americans have witnessed the closure of more than 50,000 factories and the loss of tens of millions of jobs. It was not a good deal for America then and it’s a bad deal now. It is a typical example of how politicians in Washington have failed our country.
There is an interesting analysis of China’s stumbling economy in the Observer today.
Here is a top ten guide for the perplexed.
Central Planning: Central planning, central planning. The history of the abject failure the Soviet Union’s five-year plans should tell you everything. Command and control economies that report to one man (in a nation of 1.3 billion people) are doomed from the start. Top down economic decisions often look bold and start out highly stimulative, but then degenerate into inefficiency, waste, politics and fraud.
Political Corruption: As the command and control economy generates liquidity, the demand and direction of the distributed capital becomes a political tussle. Decisions on how much steel, cement, coal, glass solar panels, high speed trains and shopping malls—in short everything—are not done in China as a cost benefit analysis by risk capital, a job difficult enough in itself. (Witness the capitalist economies’ booms and busts.) In China, this liquidity was allocated by political muscle, massive bribery and kickbacks, rather than economic justifications.
Basic Gangsterism: Counterfeiting, knockoffs, copyright infringement, theft of intellectual property these were a part of the booster rockets of China’s economic rise. It was all supposed to go away after China joined the WTO in 2001. It didn’t. It just became more institutionalized. Foreign companies needed Chinese “partners” in auto production, healthcare and technology. These “partners” crippled the potential productivity of the investments and led to frequent disputes and even more corruption… as in the GlaxoSmithKline scandals.
There are a total of nine reasons, many addressed in Trump’s piece above.
Now, the economy of China may be in free fall.
Why I am not worried about President Trump appointing judges.
[While I was finishing this post, I saw the terrible news that Justice Scalia died. God rest his soul. The GOP Senate majority should not permit President Obama to replace Justice Scalia, and should slow-walk any appointment he may make until after January 2017. That empty seat will be and should be a campaign issue. It raises the stakes considerably for the next President.]
The other day a friend asked me: “what kind of judges would Trump appoint?”
I responded:
“They will be the best, the smartest legal scholars we have, people who know the Constitution up and down, the whole thing, and especially our second amendment, which no one will touch, not while I am President, the second amendment is sacred, and they will be outstanding judges, judges who will be fair, but also do justice, and keep our country safe, so that criminals like the guy who killed Kate, beautiful Kate in San Francisco, people like that will go to prison for a long, long time, or back to Mexico, where they belong, if they are here illegally. And the judges I appoint will follow the law carefully, and they will always do what is good for America. And I know some of the best people in the country who will advise me on which judges to pick, great lawyers, great trial lawyers, and I know lawyers who are great negotiators, the best in the country, some of these guys are killers, not nice guys, but tough, smart, incredible lawyers, and legal scholars, from top law schools, the best law schools, and they know who the best people are, not necessarily people you have heard of, but the best, and we will appoint amazing judges. Trust me, the American people will be very proud of the judges we pick.”
This is of course a spoof of Mr. Trump’s speaking style.
However, a little research discloses that my satire was pretty close to what he actually said when he was asked this question: