I assume you mean quantitative answer regarding the makeup of Trump supporters. Oddly enough I understand that there hasn’t been any deep polling on this question, at least as of a couple of weeks ago. So: no data. I based the conjecture on the Trump’s evident lack of knowledge of what he was discussing.
Because we’ve had any number of former Senators and Reps who have been Presidents. It’s thought that state governors are more electable since they don’t have a voting record to defend. In the case of Obama, his first 2 years had the strongest record of legislative accomplishment of any President since FDR. Health Care reform defeated Truman, Nixon and Clinton. Obama passed it. He passed a stimulus package, saving the country from deep depression in the face of the most viscous partisanship in US history: it got to the point where Senate Leader McConnell actually filibustered a bill that he had sponsored himself. A complicated financial reform bill was passed - Dodd Frank. We knew that it was a success when GE divested itself of its financial unit: it didn’t want to be regulated as Too Big to Fail, and after its adjustments it wouldn’t have to be. Any one of these things would have represented success. Obama secured all 3.
Trump’s oratory is damn effective with the Republican base. It’s not really the issue. My objection is that neither of these 2 candidates have what I might call policy immersion. Unlike, say, Reagan who was interested in public affairs since the 1950s. I didn’t agree with Reagan and I think he damaged to the country. I’m just saying he met minimum adult requirements for the Presidency. It’s a low bar. Trump and Carson don’t meet it and it’s not clear that Fiorina does. I might give a hearing to a Professor of Government though obviously such a person is likely to be lacking managerial skills.
Setting aside minimum requirements, what is the President’s job description? It involves ceremonial work, coalition maintenance, foreign policy, domestic policy, the ability to troubleshoot a large and varied organization, managerial executive intuition and a lot of time management. Also other things: I’m working off of memory from an old Brad DeLong post.
What qualifications does a Senator bring? Senators are voted in not hired based on any qualifications. All they do is vote to spend money and not one of them knows how to live within a budget. Anyone can spend someone else’s money without any legal consequences. Literally, anyone.
Funny that while you correctly diagnose the problem in the first paragraph, you do the same thing in the second. It fails to recognize that the “educated” upper middle-classes in the Upper West Side or San Francisco or in Westchester and Marin counties believe in equally delusional nonsense: after all anti-vaxxer sentiment is very much a mental disease of the cultural left elites, without even getting into stuff like the widespread acceptance of Oriental mysticism or support for entitlement “reform”.
I wish. Trump is a populist, no doubt but unlike say Long or Bryan he is a fundamentally right-wing one, not a left-wing one.
On the whole, the rise of Donald Trump as most correctly identified by Astorian is an angry rallying cry of the white working-class who feel that neither major party’s elites are working in their interests. These were the voters who may well have voted for Wallace as a stopping-point before becoming Nixon and Reagan Democrats and later on solid Republicans due to Culture War issues and the perception that Democrats were soft on the communists and Muslims. It certainly didn’t help that for much of the previous generation the Democrats have been far more concerned with identity politics than bread and butter socioeconomic issues and even being more than willing to compromise on such issues (ie the President’s support for a “Grand Bargain” that would have meant cutting and raising the retirement age for Social Security). However, regardless of whoever they voted for, income and wages for the white working-class have continued to stagnate in the past generation with there being actual declines in life expectancy (only paralleled in post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe) for whites with low education/income levels. At the same time, from their perspective mass immigration and cultural liberalization continues unabated even while manufacturing jobs are sent overseas and Democratic environmental policies have made the Democrats in Appalachia as toxic as the Tories in Scotland after Thatcher. Finally, its quite clear in their eyes that the Republicans have not only failed to improve their economic line but also failed to achieve any victory in the Culture Wars or prevent foreign immigration even as they continue to seek to compromise with Democrats on “amnesty” or gun control. Thus we’ve rapidly reached a point where the white working-class is significantly alienated from both parties, allowing a candidate such as Trump to rise-someone whose main thrust is nationalism and populism rather than free-market capitalism . Now some important distinction is in order: Trumpism is not the Tea Party. A comparison can be drawn to the Thurmond and Wallace third party candidacies in 1948 and 1968 respectively-while both were to a certain extent candidates of white supremacy in the South-they appealed to different demographics. Thurmond was a candidate of the middle-class Southern whites especially in Black Belt towns where they dominated economically and consequently was right-wing on both economic and racial issues. Meanwhile Wallace was the candidate of the Southern white working class (the middle class Southern whites already have shifted Republican over the years), who had remained Democratic well into the 1960s when renewed racial tensions led them to abandon the Democrats. This is why Wallace (unlike Thurmond who was more or less negligable outside the South) had a respectable showing among Catholic and even Jewish white lower middle-class and working-class voters in Rust Belt cities. Similarly, the Tea Party has always been a movement dominated by college graduates and/or small businessmen especially in its ideological version which demands the gutting of the New Deal/Great Society legacy as opposed to it being merely a political identity adopted to indicate opposition to the Obama administration. It is the latter element-those who resent the cultural attitudes associated with the Democrats but who do not accept neoliberal economics who’ve embraced Trump much as their European counterparts have embraced parties such as the National Front, Danish People’s Party, UKIP, Freedom Party of Austria, and Swedish Democrats.
Thus, the rise of Donald Trump is a critical juncture in the Republic’s political history, dependent on how everyone acts in response. Certainly, it cannot be denied that Trump is a great man unlike the snivelling nonentities under such names as Bush, Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz-a man who can rally a great political movement. And in the short term, the political movement he has aroused cannot but be a positive to the Democratic Party and the American left-an enemy of an enemy is most certainly at least a temporary ally in politics, and he is the only man in America who can defy the GOP establishment and FOX News while retaining serious and strong support among normally Republicans. Certainly we should hope that Trump continues to run strong on his platform of economic populism and nationalism and that the fire he has sparked spreads to more Republican voters: if by some improbability Trump wins the nomination then the Democrats probably will be assured victory on the strength of the nonwhite vote but it is if Trump is only narrowly defeated in the primaries or better yet cheated out of the nomination at the convention due to the conniving of the party elites that holds forth more attractive possibilities. Here, if the Democrats stridently and militantly put forth a fanatical, unapologetic, and emphathic message of economic populism and yes, even nationalism, there may be a nontrivial chance that a respectable portion of the white working-class vote will be won back to the Democratic Party, returning several states into play and most importantly giving the Democrats their only reasonable shot at reclaiming the House and state legislatures. It is hardly certain nor even likely, but if the status quo of the last six years or even worse, the European political situation where it is the right-wing who have fully grasped the mantle of populism and white working-class support is to be avoided, it is critical the Democrats do their damndest to take actions in this direction.
That’s what I keep saying. Some Senators have built up a solid record of experience in particular areas of policy, and some have a great record of bipartisan dealmaking which can be useful in the Presidency. But most of them are unremarkable and just vote and give speeches.
That’s why I’m a bit confused about people claiming that you can’t be a good President without political experience, yet apparently very little political experience is necessary. It seems we actually value raw political talent more than experience or competence. Well, perhaps this time we should elect someone with no political talent, but integrity and competence instead. Maybe that will work out better.
How will we know if they’re competent? Senators have one thing that no governor ever gains: foreign policy experience. It’s the most important thing presidents do.
Picking names out of a phone book would be as good a system (for selecting leaders) as we have now. take HRC-just a lawyer who never practiced law, with no record of success in anything (except scandal). Actually, it would better for her to be secretary of the treasury-with her success in cattle trading futures, she could wipe out the debt.
SOME Senators have foreign policy experience. Biden undoubtedly specialized in that. It was also something John McCain spent a lot of time on. But others spend more time on issues like banking(Chris Dodd), social issues(Sam Brownback), or health care and entitlements(Ron Wyden), or government reform(McCain and Russ Feingold).
But that’s just the thing that makes Senators better suited for cabinet positions. They specialize because they can. Governors don’t get to do that. They are responsible for everything. And given the record of governors vs. Senators as Presidents, I don’t think a case can be made that Senators are better at foreign policy. They do seem better at getting major bills passed, which makes sense for a career legislator.
I won’t take Trump against the field, but I’d take him against any other candidate, one-on-one. IMHO, does he have as good a chance to win the nomination as Jeb? Yes. Rubio? Yes. Walker? Yes. Cruz? Yes. As good as all of them, taken together? No.
What a Senator can bring is a track record (or the lack of one, given the opportunity) of understanding complicated issues so you don’t have to, and of [del]herding cats[/del] working and playing well with others to get legislation through the obstacle course that is our legislative process.
Donald Trump will not be able to herd those cats. Ben Carson will not be able to herd those cats. Carly Fiorina will not be able to herd those cats.
Yeah, but one thing Senators don’t have is accountability. They’ve never had to be in charge of anything.
Now someone with both national legislative experience AND being governor AND making it in the private sector(and not based on their political career) is the best of all worlds.
that ship sailed, sank, and was consumed by barnacles.
Not that I’m a fan of Trump but it’s impossible to do any worse than what has transpired in the last 20 years. The issues aren’t complicated. Not even a little. It’s all about managing money.
Also - “no record of success” is a bit of an overstatement,
You may well not agree, but her professional life has seen successes
And I’d tend to view the fact that she visited more countries than any other secretary of state as a success…
Also, quoting from Wiki
sure sounds like successes to me …perhaps your standards are a bit different?
Perhaps the $400k salary and perks have been attracting over-qualified candidates. What we need as POTUS is just someone who has navigated the maze of cell phone plans and found the budgetary “sweet spot.” What else does he need to know? How to tie a bow tie for state dinners? Isn’t that what the Chief of Staff is for?
I think our problem is that we have had an “Imperial presidency” for so long (since JFK). The president should be a civil servant who buys his own lunches and cab rides, and takes tourist class. I have had it with the pomp and ceremony…I like the idea of a guy who just does his job-and that is it.
Well, our last three governor-not-legislator presidents were Clinton, Bush Jr., Reagan and Carter. All of them were completely inept at foreign policy (with a few exceptions).
Our last legislator-presidents were Obama, Bush senior, Ford and Nixon. Admittedly, Obama’s foreign policy has been up and down, but the other three were - and admittedly I wasn’t here to see most of it - unqualified successes in the foreign policy arena.
That’s totally unfair to Clinton and Reagan. GWB and Carter I give you with no reservations, although Carter was ace at negotiating peace when peace was possible. I think that had Carter been President from 1992-2000, he might have been a better President than Clinton was. The post-Cold War world was made for Carter’s style.
Then there’s LBJ, possibly the worst of the Cold War era. No, definitely the worst of the Cold War era.
Ford was too short on foreign policy to judge. There were no major events he had an opportunity to take control of, and what did occur wasn’t pleasant(Fall of Saigon, the Mayaguez incident). Bush I was excellent, but legislator was such a tiny part of his resume as to be irrelevant. What he was more known for besides being VP was running the CIA during a very difficult time for the agency and being UN representative. He had also been RNC chairman and an envoy to China. We’ve never had such a stellar resume get elected President before, and legislator was the least of it.
Nixon was good, but Nixon got his foreign policy chops as Ike’s VP. The only guys who were mostly legislators before becoming President were LBJ and Obama. But then again, neither were foreign policy specialists in the Senate. LBJ was focused primarily on the space program in his pre-VP years and Obama, well, he was a junior Senator and hadn’t yet found a niche. Joe Biden did focus on foreign policy, as well as judicial matters, as Senator, and he’s been VP, so Biden probably has a better chance of success in that regard if he’s elected.
We’ve had this discussion a lot. Those things aren’t as common as people act like they are, and they don’t really affect policy.
Bullshit. Trump is not only not a great man, but not even Trump actually thinks he is. People who are great can let their accomplishments speak for themselves. They don’t need to go around bragging all the time, and take any challenge to their “greatness” as an attack that must be aggressively defended.
Trump’s returns are worse than market. And nothing he did accomplished anything other than putting his name out there. So he has less money than he should, given his starting point. His only success is getting people to ignore that–and we do that anyways for rich people.
You might argue he’s making some great political moves, but, given his track record, these seem to be mostly on accident. He thought he would not get dropped after being a racist. His past actions show he was likely just trying to promote his shows. When he lost them, he took it as a challenge.
Again, it’s back to how easy he is to goad. A great man can’t be goaded. The reason Trump reacts the way he does is that he is a textbook narcissist. That’s why he must attack people who challenge his superiority.
I wouldn’t call those other people great, either, but Jeb Bush is definitely a better man.
Trump is a puny man who constantly feels the need to puff himself up. And, among low information angry voters, that’s enough to get their support. He says he’s great, so they believe him. They haven’t learned that great people don’t need to brag.
No, the fact that they have a record means they can be held accountable. What they may lack is leadership experience.
And, no, making it in the private sector is a huge strike against you. Barring some big turn around like Bill Gates, ot means you value making money over helping people. It means you’ll be led by what will make you more money.
What you need is making it in the non-profit sector. Or in the political-influence “sector,” which is why people like Jon Stewart would have a chance if he wanted it. But those who have political influence tend to be happier where they are.