Did the USA elect a fictional character as President in 2016?

In My Humble Opinion
1

To what degree did the USA elect a fictional character as President in 2016? And how much does it matter?

It has been claimed that Donald Trump, on the reality show The Apprentice, was a fraud, or, to put it more kindly, a fiction. The show’s producers chose who would stay and who would go. Trump was a figurehead, not a decision-maker.

Trump: The Art of the Deal, the book that inspired Mark Burnett to make the show, was ghost-written, and unreliable. Trump’s reputation is factitious at least, or even fictitious. The public voted, in effect for the fictional version, a figure of story–a lie.

Some would say that a certain level of fictionalization of a public figure is always the case, that even a serious work of history always has a bit of inaccuracy and fictionalilzation, and the electorate are always voting for the illusion, not the reality. Certainly the mythic images a few voters had of GWB and Obama were a bit silly.

But if we take The Apprentice as a big giant pantomime, and “Donald Trump” as a character in it, then did the United States of America actually vote for a panto character?

What I want to know is, could we find someone named Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark and run that person? Would, say, 27% of the electorate vote for a comic book hero? I mean, no, that’s silly. Right?

2

I would not agree with this assessment, in that:

While Trump has always played the character of a rich guy, he actually is a rich guy too. IMHO just not to the level that he claims. He’s always throwing around the billionaire numbers, but I think he’s probably actually in the hundred-millions range. For him this causes insecurity, but for the general public - he’s a rich guy and always has been one. So, that’s a wash.

He didn’t get elected because he’s a rich guy. If that worked, then Mitt Romney would have been elected. He got elected because things he said resonated with enough people in enough states. And arguably the whole Hillary is evil, and the Russian Facebook posts, and stuff like that helped. But he built his campaign by appealing to voters on his statements, and his unusual persona.

3

I think the requirement that one be a “natural born citizen” to be qualified to hold the office of President of the United States (US Constitution, Article II, Section 1) would prohibit installing a purely fictional character, one with a fraudulent identity (claiming the legal identity of another person), or a corporate person. Interestingly, it could be interpreted to prohibit people who are not “natural born”, e.g. gestated in vitro, and of course any kind of sapient machine intelligence.

Donald Trump is legally a US citizen and natural born person by any definition. That he is a fraud of a billionaire, successful businessman, a responsible and moral leader, and indeed in any capacity that we would nominally expect of a functional adult unfortunately does not technically disqualify him for holding the office unless Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell could grow spines and impeach him for any number of subversive or grossly incompetent acts. He certainly is not the first person to hold the office whose actual past does not live up to reputation; one can point to a number of men to hold that office who fabricated or embellished their pasts in self-promotional fashion or who turned out to be vastly less competent than promoted.

Nonetheless, some have managed to rise to the office; Teddy Roosevelt, who was basically the Paul Harvey “Rest of the Story” of vastly embellished personal history, turned out to be one of our most ethical and progressive of presidents, establishing the first National Monuments under the Antiquities Act and expanding the National Parks and Forest systems, imposing regulation on banking and railroads to protect the public interest, engaging the United States in international affairs as a moderator and broker of peace (and modern naval power, if peace was not to be had). He was also a, uh, Republican, although as a “Bull Moose Progressive” he was no kin to the current Grotesquely Obtuse Party, and in fact it was his break with conservatives like Taft that caused the early 20th century split of the party.

And if we’re going to discuss electing a literary or cinematic character for president, let’s not limit ourselves to Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne (who are both terrible choices for any number of reasons) and look to greater fictional heroes, like Doc Savage, Jean Grey, Nick Fury, Derek Flint, Sarah Connor, or Jack Burton. Yes, I said Jack Burton. “Just remember what ol’ Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, ‘Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.’”

Stranger

4

President MacGyver: he could probably handle it with some chewing gum and a few refrigerator magnets; but, so long as he’s got the Sixth Fleet right there…

5

Another layer of the fiction involved in Trump’s campaign is the conman aspect. He is clearly a conman and well known for it. Most of his voters know this. But they think that he’s going to be a conman for them rather than the reality of a conman taking them.

The latter is a key aspect of why conmen succeed so often.

So they see he’s a fictitious character, but the wrong fictitious character.

6

The USA didn’t elect a fictional character in any sense. Trump in the White House is much the same as Trump on the campaign trail.

7

Since Ronald Reagan I have a feeling that almost anything is possible. :wink:

Actually with starting as Democrats and moving Republican afterwards, the TV link, and other things, comparisons of the two (not their politics so much as the paths they took) have popped up other places I lurk. I’m not sure how much I buy it but it is interesting reading.

8

Fake President? yes

9

Reagan had been campaigning for over a decade before getting elected and 1980 was not his first crack at the Presidency.

10

Someone needs to explain to me why Trump is so bad as a president. I don’t mean with accusations, but with things that actually have been proven, not implied. ( Of course his loose tonque and twitter fingers are terrible .)

11

You mean things like his terrible diplomatic skills, his inability to comfort families of fallen soldiers without making a controversy out of it, his reluctance to condemn white nationalists, his nominating numerous people to which executive posts with conflicts of interest or fundamental incompetence, his inability to support his own staff when they are desperately trying to fix his messes, and his general fuckatude about the decorum and integriity of the office? Other than that, he’s doing a bang-up crackerjack job. His frequency and number of golf vacations has been spectacular.

Stranger

12

If we elect a fictional character, it should be Oliver Queen, because he has actual experience in government.

13

Interesting concept. Not the first time I’ve heard it discussed, actually, if on a lesser level. There’re obvious personality characteristics he plays up as if nothing’s changed as far as his responsibilities. I think as long as we let him have his Fox & Friends and cheeseburgers, he “might” not push the button. You know, the much bigger button.

14

He was fictional on the campaign trail too. He’s playing a character (badly). The fact that he has been doing so for a long time doesn’t mean it becomes real. He’s not a Republican, he’s doesn’t care about the fucking wall, he doesn’t care about bringing jobs back to America, or reforming the immigration code. It’s all an act. But he’s stupid and vain, so that gets in his way.

Now, you could say all politicians play the part they think we get them elected. Maybe that’s true. My impression, however, is that even with the worst of them (before now) they did have some core agenda or principles that informed their positions and appointments, and they pandered to the voters from that point of view. Trump may be the first “all pander” politician.

15

I am not sure “bad” is the correct term people here are meaning: Trump is not a usual President and doesn’t follow the Presidential norms. That is what many people respond to and call his decisions bad. But in many cases it is a judgement call. His lack of diplomatic discretion, his refusal to reveal his personal finances, his repeated insults of anyone who opposes his current thinking etc, are violations of the norm. However, they aren’t necessarily bad in any objective sense. For instance if there is nothing nefarious in his personal finances, then there is no objective reason why he should reveal them. If he wants to take the public criticism over that decision, then that is his choice. But his actions look bad to many people and indicate the kind of personality many people don’t want running the country. However, that is a judgement call and clearly his base is in favor of these actions and that personality. So I don’t think one can call them objectively bad.

However, to answer your question I cite his environmental decisions, specifically the decisions his small group of appointees in Interior and EPA are making with his concurrence. Those are objectively bad-at least to a large segment of the country. Reducing the size of existing monuments is unprecedented and possibly illegal. Eliminating clean air and clean water regulations will increase deaths and illness in the population. Reducing alternative energy efforts will reduce our efforts toward combating global warming. There are many other objectively bad decisions he and his appointees have made. Of course, there will be winners from these decisions, but objectively far more losers.

Very few decisions, good or bad, are entirely one-sided in the sense that there are zero benefits or zero harms. Allowing a company to buy new trucks and install old but completely rebuilt engines in them thereby allowing those trucks to never have to follow modern pollution standards does benefit the company that sells them, but it also increases the number of deaths and illness in the country from the large increase in pollution caused by those trucks. That, at least to me, is objectively a bad decision. It is allowing a few people to financially benefit from the suffering of others which is the definition of objectively bad.

16

Claimed by who?

17

Aside from some innuendos, I am happy that I got some real responses.

I had thought this board was totally against Trump.

18

No more so than the country in general. We have both those who despise him and don’t support him and those who despise him and grudgingly support him.

19

Every day I, too, ask myself, “Is this guy for real?”

20

Aside from what his opponents say, he was elected legally and some of us don’t despise him.