Donald Trump: Come Kiss the Ring

How so?
If he didn't have his father's money where would he be?

 

No way to know.

But, we do know that he grew it.

What's the evidence you would have done as well or better?

 

How could I have done worse than four bankruptcies?
And it's not as if he worked his ass off to get to where he is.

 

Lol. Ok. You go with that.

 

And you really think it was his work ethic that got him where he is?

 

No one ever became successful through hard work.

 

It's a lot easier when you have a safety net named Daddy.

 

Also helps to be smart.

 

1. I think he's worked long hours to build his businesses. I don't like the word "hard." That's subjective to people. He's worked a lot.

2. Who cares? Lots of people work a lot. How much he's worked and how much money he's made is only barely tangential to the office. Governing human welfare has almost nothing to do with running a business, where the aims are much narrower and sometimes at odds with human welfare. And the money piece, in terms of effective governing, is truly inconsequential; poor and rich alike can be effective and ineffective leaders, provided the opportunity. For his many flaws, Mitt Romney, I suspect, can run a country pretty well. Bill Clinton, for his many flaws, ran it pretty well until Lewinsky.

3. The GOP's problem, in this day and age, is that, being obsessed with the ability to make money and moral virtue as separate values, it has begun to conflate having the former with possession of the latter. Trump can and has made money. It's largely immaterial, and always has been, to broad, public leadership.

There's little to suggest Trump has much empathy or relational skills when it comes to peers (political or financial), that he has an effective rubric for complex moral matters, that he can deliver, well, bad news, comfort those in sorrow, or be any kind champion for those struggling. He is, for a lack of better phrase, a little oblivious to most of the world. He reminds me, in this way, of Al Gore.

Gore is frankly similar. Born on at least second base in terms of political careers, opinionated, fairly autocratic and effective at getting people to buy his brand across a variety of platforms. Gore was more effective at hiding his disdain, but he was, like Trump, an enormously condescending guy.

 

He's not the smartest GOP candidate, that's for sure. And I wouldn't rank him in the top three.

Cruz is the smartest. He knows it, too.

Walker strikes me as pretty dim, on the whole.

 

... and march them to the door of the oven.

That's strong.

 

How would Trump be perceived here if he was a Democrat? Popular because he's rich and runs 515 business affairs? Would lefties denigrate his business acumen vis a vis his father?