Perhaps Donald Trump is just as unprepared to be President of the United States as we were unprepared to see him win the election.
I know some people are trying to change the outcome of the election (via recounts or by pressuring the Electoral College). To me, those efforts will eventually amount to nothing.
I had a thought. What if, after 100 days or so, Donald Trump resigns?
Oh, come on. It's not so far fetched. Here are my reasons why this might happen.
1. I hear that he keeps making outrageous statements on Twitter. Perhaps that played well during the campaign, but it's not very presidential. We expect our President to be calm and assume something of a "Father Knows Best" role, a wise person who can keep our national 'family' on a steady course, not behave like a younger sibling who is always causing trouble. What if he just can't stand to give up his old ways?
2. A more serious reason might have to do how much harder it is to get anything done as President versus his experience with power over his various businesses and reality TV shows. You can't just snap your fingers and expect immediate obedience. Quick decisions typically do not go well. There is the vast machinery of government as well as the complexity of relations with other countries around the world. The fate of billions of people (literally) can be affected. A chief executive with a short attention span and an impulsive personality is, ... shall I say, ... incompatible?
Perhaps Mr. Trump will just say to hell with it all and go back to making money and living high on the profits, something he obviously enjoys.
3. That brings me to the third question. Can he really leave all his business interests to be run by a third party in a blind trust. OK, perhaps being President of the United States is such a big deal, that he will somehow force himself to let go of all that. At the moment, I don't see more than the first few stages in the grief process: Denial, anger, and bargaining.
4. The biggest question of all is how he will deal with a critical loss of popularity. Very soon, it will become obvious to everyone (especially the 60 million people who voted for him), that he will be unable to accomplish most of what he promised during the campaign. Perhaps some items on his list, such as making Mexico pay for the wall, were acknowledged by his supporters with a nod and a wink anyway.
But the most critical of his campaign promises, that he will "drain the swamp" of bureaucracy and corruption in Washington, is very likely to be dragged down by the very quagmire of government bureaucracy he is trying to eliminate!
After all, we're not only governed by our famous Constitution, a document small enough to keep in your shirt pocket. We are actually governed by billions of words of enacted laws, judicial findings (aka 'case law'), and written government regulations that result from all that. The number of employees who carry out those laws and enforce those regulations runs into the millions, all of whom hope to keep their jobs. Add the significant influence from the so-called private sector and political action committees to the mix and you get a gigantic intertwined morass. Sweep away one thing and something else becomes an immediate problem.
Thus, as we drift further and further away from his campaign promises, his approval ratings will plummet. The voters who supported him will become disgusted and disillusioned. Here was the guy who was going to fix all this and now he's turning out just like the others! Say one thing and then end up doing pretty much what the last guy did, once you get in power.
Look at what happened to Barack Obama. We started with thousands of images of his shining solarized face, looking toward the sky in with the phrase "Yes, we can!" beneath. Does all that optimism now seem foolish in hindsight? If we had elected Hillary, the first woman, would any of this have changed much? I seriously doubt it.
What is Donald Trump's tenacity in the face of this daunting task? Where will he find the strength to persevere when the results are bound to be so disappointing? Stay tuned!
I know some people are trying to change the outcome of the election (via recounts or by pressuring the Electoral College). To me, those efforts will eventually amount to nothing.
I had a thought. What if, after 100 days or so, Donald Trump resigns?
Oh, come on. It's not so far fetched. Here are my reasons why this might happen.
1. I hear that he keeps making outrageous statements on Twitter. Perhaps that played well during the campaign, but it's not very presidential. We expect our President to be calm and assume something of a "Father Knows Best" role, a wise person who can keep our national 'family' on a steady course, not behave like a younger sibling who is always causing trouble. What if he just can't stand to give up his old ways?
2. A more serious reason might have to do how much harder it is to get anything done as President versus his experience with power over his various businesses and reality TV shows. You can't just snap your fingers and expect immediate obedience. Quick decisions typically do not go well. There is the vast machinery of government as well as the complexity of relations with other countries around the world. The fate of billions of people (literally) can be affected. A chief executive with a short attention span and an impulsive personality is, ... shall I say, ... incompatible?
Perhaps Mr. Trump will just say to hell with it all and go back to making money and living high on the profits, something he obviously enjoys.
3. That brings me to the third question. Can he really leave all his business interests to be run by a third party in a blind trust. OK, perhaps being President of the United States is such a big deal, that he will somehow force himself to let go of all that. At the moment, I don't see more than the first few stages in the grief process: Denial, anger, and bargaining.
4. The biggest question of all is how he will deal with a critical loss of popularity. Very soon, it will become obvious to everyone (especially the 60 million people who voted for him), that he will be unable to accomplish most of what he promised during the campaign. Perhaps some items on his list, such as making Mexico pay for the wall, were acknowledged by his supporters with a nod and a wink anyway.
But the most critical of his campaign promises, that he will "drain the swamp" of bureaucracy and corruption in Washington, is very likely to be dragged down by the very quagmire of government bureaucracy he is trying to eliminate!
After all, we're not only governed by our famous Constitution, a document small enough to keep in your shirt pocket. We are actually governed by billions of words of enacted laws, judicial findings (aka 'case law'), and written government regulations that result from all that. The number of employees who carry out those laws and enforce those regulations runs into the millions, all of whom hope to keep their jobs. Add the significant influence from the so-called private sector and political action committees to the mix and you get a gigantic intertwined morass. Sweep away one thing and something else becomes an immediate problem.
Thus, as we drift further and further away from his campaign promises, his approval ratings will plummet. The voters who supported him will become disgusted and disillusioned. Here was the guy who was going to fix all this and now he's turning out just like the others! Say one thing and then end up doing pretty much what the last guy did, once you get in power.
Look at what happened to Barack Obama. We started with thousands of images of his shining solarized face, looking toward the sky in with the phrase "Yes, we can!" beneath. Does all that optimism now seem foolish in hindsight? If we had elected Hillary, the first woman, would any of this have changed much? I seriously doubt it.
What is Donald Trump's tenacity in the face of this daunting task? Where will he find the strength to persevere when the results are bound to be so disappointing? Stay tuned!
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