I’ve been looking at a gallery of shots of Trump from his 20s to the present. It’s interesting seeing Trump as a young guy with his wife Ivana on his arm swanning through New York society, a Trump who back then was a Democrat. Let’s suppose he had decided to get into politics young and after winning a Senate race had later somehow beaten out Dukakis for the Democrat nomination for the Presidency and then had gone on to whip Bush Senior’s ass and become President in 1988 at the age of 42. (I’m assuming he was still a Democrat then but if not let’s suppose that he was for the sake of the argument.)
Would he have governed then more intelligently than he’s governing now? I’m guessing his views were more liberal then as he was, at least nominally, a Democrat. He surely wasn’t the same lunatic then as he is now. Or was he?
Let’s put it in a nutshell. If you were a voter in the 1988 Presidential Election and the candidates were George HW Bush and Donald J Trump which candidate would you vote for?
He still wouldn’t have been a good president—wouldn’t have the experience, the knowledge, or the temperament for the job. But Young Trump would be less senile and would have had less time for the toxic parts of his character to harden.
ETA: Whoops–just saw this was in General Questions. It doesn’t look like a GQ sort of question—is that where you meant to post it?
I don’t think that Trump has always been so out of touch with reality. Whether his current state of mind is age-related, medication-related or something else is open to discussion but I think a younger version of him wouldn’t have had some of these issues and would have probably been more liberal.
It’s amazing to me how much having a black president for 8 years seems to gall so many people including Trump. It’s almost like he and the Republics view anything that Obama touched as being toxic and contaminated and therefore has to be destroyed.
The problem is nothing Trump says can be taken at face value, he will say anything. So looking at his statements from the past probably doesn’t matter much.
Having said that, before Trump went insane with rage and disgust over having a black president, and before the dementia turned him into a complete mess of a human being he probably would’ve done a less bad job as president.
End your second sentence after the fourth word, and I’d be more inclined to agree.
I think most people could figure out whether the posters in question were referencing an actual medical diagnosis or not. I’m willing to be proven wrong.
That he was always like that? His ghostwriter certainly seems to think so.
I would take GHWB over any version of Trump in a heartbeat, even if 1988 Trump’s political beliefs were closer to my own than Bush’s are. Some people simply do not have the temperament to be president, and electing one of them tends to do one’s political agenda more harm than good.
