I keep hearing this, but I don’t get it. I don’t see how anyone can say that a man who makes one easily checked lie after another is good at marketing himself.
Yes, his message of bigotry and selfishness does seem to appeal to an unfortunately large percentage of the electorate, but even so, how does proving himself stupid and/or mendacious help get that message across? Surely he could be just as bigoted and selfish, and appeal to voters who like that, without claiming that he had the biggest inauguration crowd, or that he never said X when he’s on tape saying it, etc.
No doubt a factor. But neither of those traits is exactly rare, either.
And how did he get that celebrity status? Not just by having a rich father: There are plenty of people with richer fathers than he, but far less name recognition. He got his name recognition, where they didn’t, because of his marketing abilities.
Yes, Trump had seed money (to expand on elucidator’s pun), a lack of scruples, and a fair bit of luck. And all of those helped. But even the combination of all three wasn’t enough to land him in the Oval Office. There had to have been some talent on his own part involved, and he sure as heck doesn’t have any talent other than self-promotion.
And there’s the proof right there. The touchstone of being good at marketing is being able to get away with blatant lies. If marketing were about telling the truth, the field wouldn’t even exist.
That’s the point. Trump is great at marketing. And he’s terrible at delivering. His political career has followed the same pattern as his business career.
As a businessman, Trump was great at convincing gullible people that they should invest in his projects. Once he had their money, these projects often failed. But he had a core base of really gullible people who would accept his excuses that the failure wasn’t his fault (or that the failure hadn’t even happened even though the results Trump promised never came through) and would be willing to invest in him again.
As a politician, Trump was great at convincing people they should vote for him. Now that he’s elected, his presidency is failing. And he has a core base of really gullible people who accept his excuses that the failure isn’t his fault (or that the failure isn’t happening even though the results Trump promised aren’t coming through) and will be willing to vote for him again.
I disagree. I actually think it is quite rare, pathological even, to not have shame. Politicians lie, of course. But they usually feel the need to have some kind of plausible deniability. And when corrected publicly, they often rephrase or stop making the claim publicly. Trump has not even one ounce of that. He is the perfect specimen for a post-truth era in which self-admitted fault is the only kind of fault that sticks.
Trump ran a classic demagogue’s campaign. There is a reason it is a classic! It would surprise no political scholar since Herodotus that a leader can get some degree of popular support by going after the barbarians. It has greater and lesser appeal at different political moments. 2016 was perfect for it. And Trump was a great vessel for it precisely because he has zero sense of decency. Ted Cruz tried to do this, but although he is nearly a sociopath, some small part of his brain would make him say something half-way decent when pressed on it by reporters. Trump had none of that. He was happy to advocate that we kill the families of terrorists, and his supporters love him for it.
There are a lot of good points raised in this thread about Trump and his lack of success/ability. Many of which I agree with. The problem with them all is that Trump is in fact the President of the United States and in control of a large cash-flow when by rights he should be a broke has-been.
I am trying to understand how he got to this point when everything I believe in says he should have failed and disappeared many years ago.
Certainly he lies-a lot. But unlike many liars, he understands something. He knows how to lie in such a way as to send a message to his supporters that they agree with. Call it bigotry and selfishness. But his supporters don’t. They hear those same statements and understand another message that they agree with. And it isn’t bigotry or selfishness. I know a very well-educated and successful banker who is simply tired of people assuming he is a bigot because of who he is and where he lives. He is convinced, and I have to agree with him, that progressives assume he is a terrible person just because he doesn’t agree with them. He doesn’t like it. And he supports Trump because Trump understands him and he understands Trump.
My fear is that opponents to Trump don’t understand him and therefor can’t defeat him. While the opponents are focusing on Trump’s lies and “defeats”, Trump is winning elections and finding ways so he gets the credit and gets the money (Obamacare).
It certainly rings a bell!
And yes, the Republican Congressional effort to kill Obamacare failed. And lucky for the Republicans. Just think about where they would be if all they had done was repeal Obamacare. They would have been on the hook for a replacement-something that involves either big taxes or big deficits. Now they don’t have to face that.
Now lets look at Trump.
Are his supporters blaming him? Or Congress? It doesn’t matter what his opponents think, they aren’t going to vote for Trump and so don’t matter-to Trump.
As we all know, Trump has taken executive action that effectively repeals the parts of Obamacare that he dislikes the most-affordable care for lower and middle-income people. So that part of repeal has been successful. He will be taking credit for that. He didn’t get all the repeal he “wants”, all the taxes remain and so now he has tens to hundreds of billions of dollars rolling in to do with what he wants. As for anyone arguing that the taxes are for medical care-remember social security. The Government runs a deficit and money is fungible. Any surplus in one area reduces the federal deficit a bit and provides the Government with justification to buy something else.
I think you are overselling this talent that he clearly has, to sell the sizzle and not the steak.
Even the Founding Fathers knew that people would sometimes go with their passions, and designed a government for the specific purpose of allowing other branches of government to check the abuse of power, especially by the executive. So while Trump is a novelty, what he’s doing isn’t new.
Nor do I think it takes a type of genius to pull off this populist rhetoric. His support is just barely over one in three Americans: that’s something amazing? No, having someone with pretty conservative views average about 55% approval rating through his tenure, like Ronald Reagan did, is far more an impressive accomplishment.
What Trump is achieving basically seems like selling homeopathy. Most people don’t care for it; some know what utter bullshit it is; and some gobble it up because it is what they want to hear. And the latter group makes homeopathy a huge business: it doesn’t have to appeal to everyone, or even most people; it just needs some core support to be “successful.”
Well, OK, what is to be done? We’ve already had plenty of advice that we ought to be “nicer”. So, now we got to be smarter? How do we go about that, perzackly? Could be better informed, but how do you get smarter? Gecko Balboa tea?
Or are you suggesting we take up their tools? Maybe call random people on the phone and lie to them about something? And you touch those tools, you got to scrub your hands with Brillo pads to get the stain out.
Did he ever walk back that thundering buttwhistle about how he would have won the popular vote had it not been for three to five million illegal voters? Or is that still dangling out there?
But seriously, that’s just yet another one of those ridiculous lies he just threw out there, then let slowly disappear from the news, leaving his supporters to vaguely think it must still be true, and the rest of us to move on to digesting the next lie, and the next, and the next…
Okay, I take it back: it’s bigotry, selfishness, and resentment.
Seriously, you are offering us a textbook case of the phenomenon Richard Parker described so succinctly, a few posts back:
‘Trump won, therefore he must have admirable, exceptional qualities’…this is poor logic. One does not follow from the other.
‘A man whose own narcissism and stupidity made him the perfect tool for a manipulative foreign adversary, was perfectly willing to be the patsy of that foreign adversary’ is a more accurate portrayal of Trump’s situation. It took no talent or smarts on Trump’s part to take the oligarchs’ money and thereby be compromised; it took no talent or smarts on Trump’s part to benefit from the massive propaganda campaign with which the foreign adversary gifted him.
Trump has no talents nor intelligence. He’s a born-rich bully who wrecked several businesses through his own ineptitude, then let himself be bailed out–and, again, compromised–by foreign interests.
And now we know that a man can be elected President without possessing any talents or intelligence. We’ve learned that lesson. And it is already proving to be a very expensive one.
Trump is smart because:
a) he has good ideas?
b) he ideas that are good in spite of all the opinions to the contrary by experts?
c) of his handling of complex political issues is so deft that his subtle machinations actually appear like ignorant blundering to ordinary minds like us?
d) of his ability to push forward his agenda in spite of his ignorant blundering?
Well…what we will hopefully learn is whether the Founding Fathers idiot-proofed the Constitution.
Tough call. They didn’t foresee the rise of political parties (which was a screw up on their part). Once political parties became entrenched, politicians began putting the interests of their party above the interests of the public. We have the means of controlling somebody like a President Trump. But the political party in power doesn’t want to use those powers.
I wish I knew.
I got no plan.
I do know that passions/emotions win elections. The easiest passion to arouse is fear-so one side gets their base to fear the other. I don’t like it though. Fear never generates a good outcome.
I am afraid I have to go with d. He certainly has demonstrated ignorant blundering. But he has spent 40 years learning how to succeed in spite of himself. I fear that those lessons are translating to the political realm. We can all list Trump’s failures. What I am afraid of is that we are missing his successes until it is too late.
