Although remarks Trump made twenty years ago suggest that he was moderate on many issues, to get full GOP support he has pledged to appoint right-wingers as Cabinet secretaries and advisers. A key question therefore is: will Trump, knowing his own ignorance, defer to advisers? Or will he impose his own policies? I find either possibility unsettling.
Even if the advisers were to be intelligent centrists — and they won’t be — for a President to over-rely on advisers is very bad. Advisers do not carry full responsibility for their decisions. The President must step in when advisers disagree. For a well-grounded President to arbitrate among advisers is fine, but for a man without knowledge or vision to do it can lead to inconsistency and failure, even when either of the advisers acting alone could have gotten good results. This will be especially true if Trump, acting to get right-wing support, has advisers he doesn’t agree with. Or if Trump adopts right-wing principles he doesn’t truly embrace or even understand.
And, independent of advisers or legislation, the personality of a President provides guidance to the nation. Under Trump we can expect police brutality and people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio to be more respected, and dissenters like BLM to be more ostracized.
Putting domestic policy into the hands of Trump and a Republican Congress shouldn’t be any worse than putting it in the hands of a Cruz or Rubio; Congress may reject the worst stupidities.
Therefore the big fear is foreign crises.
One thing we can count on: Early on, Putin will test a Trump Presidency with an egregious provocation. It’ll be win-win for Putin; if Trump under-reacts Putin has a new satellite country for his empire, or increased influence in the Middle East. If Trump over-reacts, America’s allies will desert a Trump-led U.S.A. and be more willing to support counter-powers like Russia and China.
Bookies now show Trump as 33% or more to win the White House. We could be on the verge of an epic tragedy; a Trump Presidency could make the sins of Bush-Cheney seem like “the good old days.”
a) No one on the Republican side could beat Hillary. Sanders maybe; but against Hillary all you can hope for is not being totally embarrassed.
b) Remember how President Obama ran the first time around basically looking like the new version of FDR and how quickly the Democrats trimmed those horns down? Those first two years when he could have had basically anything he wanted? Figure about the same thing amplified by a factor of 10. The result would be a POTUS who can’t even get basic support from his own party let alone the other side of the aisle. Would world leaders take advantage of that? Damn betcha.
Trump will shoot first and ask questions later. He was on the air within five minutes of the Egyptian plane disappearing blaming terrorists. Now maybe it was terrorists; there is really no evidence one way or the other yet, but Trump isn’t interested in evidence (of course, in that he is just like the rest of the GOP) only in blather.
I predict that he would fill his cabinet with yes-men (and maybe a few very good-looking women) who would be terrified to contradict him.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look the kind of slam-dunk for Hillary that would have been predicted just a couple months ago. And “Ralph” Sanders isn’t helping one little bit.
I agree with the OP that the biggest vulnerability is foreign affairs. There are checks and balances on the domestic side of things so that a president can only do so much. But if the president is trigger-happy, he can order in the bombs or even the troops only on his say-so. And let’s remember that the 2001 AUMF is still in effect, and that gives incredibly broad authority to the president. We can only hope that it would turn out to be a case where the Big Bully is really just a scared little coward.
Congress needs to rescind the 2001 AUMF now. Not just for fear of Trump. I don’t want Hillary to have that authority either!
I’m more interventionist than many on the left, and I’m afraid a cowardly Trump could also be very bad. Or a Trump who feels he and Putin are birds of a feather and should team up. I want the U.S. governed by someone with stable temperament and clear vision, not a moody misogynist who follows whims.
My choice of “will” rather than “would” in OP title was deliberate — I wanted a scary title. Trump victory is far more likely than many think, IMHO, and sane Americans need to wake up and fight.
I’ll just assume your odds are correct. Do you understand how bookies work? They don’t predict who will win anything. They set odds in order to get the bets split evenly on either side of the bet so they can make their guaranteed money off the vig. It’s ridiculous to use a bookie’s odds to predict the outcome of a presidential race let alone a sporting event.
Studies have shown that betting markets — if the total action is large enough — are about the most reliable way to predict such events! (I’ve seen peer-reviewed papers making this point, going back to the period when New York’s Curb Exchange mediated bets on Presidential elections, but won’t do your Googling for you.) If you think about it, the fact shouldn’t be far-fetched at all: ***it’s the Efficient Market in action!
If you think you can predict sporting events significantly better than bookie’s odds, maybe you should quit your day job!
(Of course this assumes money wagered is large enough to outweigh other factors. Rich backers of a political candidate may have an incentive to sway the odds.)
“They don’t predict who will win anything.” Yes. It’s precisely because bookies don’t try to be pundits, but rather mediate an open market that their odds reflect reality better than those of pundits.
I agree with the premise that international crises would be the main fear but I think spooking the market and abuse of power scandals are close seconds.
The man says completely idiotic things about debt and the economic system as a whole. A few weeks ago he essentially suggested that the US should consider defaulting on Treasury bonds, although he didn’t seem to understand this https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/09/donald-trumps-bizarre-explanation-of-how-the-national-debt-works/ . Once this was pointed out to him he pretended he was instead floating the almost as stupid idea that we could buy back the bonds with money from printing more money. The market hasn’t reacted to this because they either don’t believe he will be president or think that no one will really allow him to do this if he wanted to. Still, if he says stuff like this in the Oval Office the implications could pretty terrible.
I think it will look just like Paul Lepage’s tenure as governor of Maine. Trump will say terrible things to get attention, but Congress will stop him from doing anything too drastic.
See, I didn’t think he’d be the nominee either, so I was wrong about that. But, the cynic in me says something would…happen… to him.
Now, I despise Trump. I think if he became President it would be a disaster for the country. But I would despise even more whoever would make that event “happen”
Again totally missing the point. Bookies don’t predict winners they predict how people who are going to bet will put their money. Not the same thing at all. When talking about betting on elections you are mostly talking about bookies in the UK so they are further removed from predicting the election since they are not reading how Ameicans will actually vote but how foreigners think Americans will vote.
No. It’s you who is totally missing the point. Let’s start with basics. What’s your response to If you think you can predict sporting events significantly better than bookie’s odds, maybe you should quit your day job!
There is always a disconnect between the promises Presidents make when they were running for office and what they actually do after being elected. With Trump this disconnect could well be truly massive. So right now we have Trump saying he will push for the immediate repeal of Obamacare, then later maybe fix a few things–in other words the mainstream Republican view–so he can get broad Republican support for the election. In the past Trump has been positive about the Canadian and similar systems. What will he do about this if elected President? No one knows.