Deeper_Background
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2004
- Messages
- 4,234
By: Michael Barone 04/08/11 1:48 PM
Senior Political Analyst
Should we begin take Donald Trump seriously? Jay Cost in The Weekly Standard thinks so. Cost concentrates not on Trump's raising the birther issue—"it is fundamentally undermining his line of attack on Barack Obama," he writes—but on the fact that this outside-of-partisan-politics but still very well-known [business] celebrity is launching an attack on an incumbent president in a forum, the first half hour of the Today show, generally considered a serious public affairs program, is what's extraordinary.
I have made the point that the way is open for an independent or third-party presidential candidate as it was in 1992: we're facing serious financial problems, voters have negative feelings toward both political parties and—as Cost points out—Barack Obama's OK but not spectacular general job approval numbers have underpinnings in his more negative ratings on specific issues. But what really got my attention in Cost's article was the author he quoted to show how Trump was doing something like what Ross Perot did in 1992: me. He quoted a fairly lengthy passage from the Introduction to The Almanac of American Politics 1994, which I wrote some time in the spring of 1993. Pretty good stuff, I thought as I read it, and suddenly remembered writing it though the passage hadn't crossed my mind lately.
Cost puts in italics the following sentence in my Introduction. "Perot's campaign 'departisanized the critique of Bush,' as Democratic strategist Paul Tully put it, pushing Bush lower in the polls in the spring as a then-wounded Bill Clinton could not have done." The quote came from an interview with Paul Tully at the 1992 Democratic National Convention; he dropped dead at an early age shortly afterward. But his analysis was spot on, and I think Jay Cost is on to something when he says that Trump has a similar potential to inflict damage on Obama.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/04/should-we-take-donald-trump-seriously
Senior Political Analyst
Should we begin take Donald Trump seriously? Jay Cost in The Weekly Standard thinks so. Cost concentrates not on Trump's raising the birther issue—"it is fundamentally undermining his line of attack on Barack Obama," he writes—but on the fact that this outside-of-partisan-politics but still very well-known [business] celebrity is launching an attack on an incumbent president in a forum, the first half hour of the Today show, generally considered a serious public affairs program, is what's extraordinary.
I have made the point that the way is open for an independent or third-party presidential candidate as it was in 1992: we're facing serious financial problems, voters have negative feelings toward both political parties and—as Cost points out—Barack Obama's OK but not spectacular general job approval numbers have underpinnings in his more negative ratings on specific issues. But what really got my attention in Cost's article was the author he quoted to show how Trump was doing something like what Ross Perot did in 1992: me. He quoted a fairly lengthy passage from the Introduction to The Almanac of American Politics 1994, which I wrote some time in the spring of 1993. Pretty good stuff, I thought as I read it, and suddenly remembered writing it though the passage hadn't crossed my mind lately.
Cost puts in italics the following sentence in my Introduction. "Perot's campaign 'departisanized the critique of Bush,' as Democratic strategist Paul Tully put it, pushing Bush lower in the polls in the spring as a then-wounded Bill Clinton could not have done." The quote came from an interview with Paul Tully at the 1992 Democratic National Convention; he dropped dead at an early age shortly afterward. But his analysis was spot on, and I think Jay Cost is on to something when he says that Trump has a similar potential to inflict damage on Obama.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/04/should-we-take-donald-trump-seriously
