In all honesty: almost none. He just wanted to be president. Most of his time will be spend enriching himself by selling banal access and bloviating on the world stage. That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful.
Of your list:
The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize. There's no funding for a deportation force and the political optics of goon squads rounding people up is something congress won't do. No one actually wants to yank medical coverage from millions of voters (they'll just let the democrats filibuster it in the senate). There's nothing meaningful to renegotiate in NAFTA, no serious stakeholders have suggestions there. Coal hasn't really gone away, and permiting and regulation changes are going to take longer than four years anyway. "Bring back american companies" is just a fairy tale. Global economics simply doesn't work like that and there's nothing a chief executive can do.
That leaves: Muslim ban. Maybe, at least in some symbolic way. Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, duh. But that's a republican staple and we've survived it before. US deficit spending is actually not nearly so serious a problem as people believe.
>That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful.
My main concern is foreign policy. The House can drive domestic policy and hopefully not make a mess of it, but foreign policy is all Trump's domain. He's vain and temperamental, this provides two powerful levers that manipulative foreign powers like China and Russia are free to push and pull as they like. He's also notoriously bad at taking advice. Frankly, it's not looking good.
Same here! As someone who went to school for International Relations, this is so sickening. I live abroad and let me tell you, people are very upset around the world.
I don't think you understand how ego works. He wants to be more than just president, he wants to be a great president, that's in his nature. I truly believe he'll do what it takes to make himself into a great president. Do you think he wants to be remembered more as a George W. Bush or a Ronald Reagan?
I'm about as worried about a Trump presidency as I am worried that I'll remember how to breath at night.
Human Nature says he'll strive to be the best and I have faith in that.
If only that was all it took: "do what it takes to make himself into a great president". Do you think George W. Bush didn't want to be a great president? If it was that simple, just pick a random person from the street.
The man, by his own account, doesn't read books. He gets his information from cable TV. He has the attention span of a gnat (couldn't be bothered to prepare for the debates; it showed). This is the man, back in 1984, who wanted to be the one to handle the nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets. "It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles."[1] In 2016 he didn't know what the nuclear triad was.
His gaffes on foreign policy the last year and a half include: suggesting that the national debt in negotiable, support of Nato allies is not guaranteed, Japan should get Nukes, countries in Asia should feel free to nuke each other if they want to, "if we have the nukes, why can't we use them?". Those are just some of the things I can remember off the top of my head.
The best we can hope for is that he gets bored being a president very quickly and doesn't screw up too much in the meantime.
His entourage doesn't exactly inspire confidence either.
> He wants to be more than just president, he wants to be a great president, that's in his nature.
I'm not sure that I buy that from his history. His life is one of chasing adulation and attention. He built gaudy hotels in big cities, he never chased the real estate growth market in housing. He ran a reality show, not a media network.
He's a narcissist, not a despot. Fill his cabinet with fawning sycophants and give him a media organization or two at which to direct his rage and I'll bet anything he just sits on his ass in the oval office and waits out his four years.
I guess that's what passes for optimism today. But it's the story I'm sticking to.
When you get a new job as a software engineer most people just want to be considered good at their jobs, while some select few strive to be considered great. maybe not so much for adulation and attention but to feel like they've mastered something and can thus offer advice to others, it's what drives us. In that pursuit of our definition of greatness we study constantly and try to improve our skills in every area and thus our need to be great drives the sharpening of our skills and leads to a self fulfilling prophecy (Our desire to become great leads to us pursuing more knowledge to become better and thus in time we become great)
Donald Trump's definition of great is clearly being admired and in the spot light. But I think he also defines greatness as being a leader, I think he also associates greatness with quality.
I'm not worried about this presidency one bit, his need to be great will drive him to be great by all definitions.
And yet millions of Americans have a lot of anxiety about what a Trump presidency will bring because of the colour of their skin, the religion they practice, or the gender of the person they love.
If Trump wants to be remembered as a great President then he needs to step up and address these fears.
I think in a way he already did at his acceptance speech last night, but how many liberals scoffed and turned off their televisions? Perhaps it's liberals and people of color who need to stop the hate, I think there was a lot more hate towards Trump and his supporters than there ever was towards minorities in this election.
I could not agree more. People really need to let go of the provocative candidate Trump (the stock market did today) and focus on the impact that's coming.
As much as his path to the nomination and then the presidency is a surprise, his call for unity was more presidential than he's ever been. I think it would be short-sighted to immediately discount his presidency as a failure without seeing the people and actions that he puts into place.
Road to hell is paved with great intentions.
A man with subpar intelligence and understanding of the issues, will most likely make the wrong decision, even if it's with the noblest of intentions.
If you think Trump has subpar intelligence, how do you explain his victory when the best and brightest politicians, journalists, etc. were fighting against him?
For extra points, provide an explanation that doesn't demonize or insult a large swath of the population.
That's bad logic. There are always dozens of candidates and activists trying lots of different tacts and strategies to get votes and drive opinions. One of those turns out to win in certain circumstances. That doesn't necessarily mean its author was a genius to have thought of it, just that they got lucky.
It's a darwinian thing. We don't credit the lobe finned fish for being such geniuses to have developed limbs which could hold them out of the water.
Are you willing to claim that intelligence isn't correlated with success at achieving one's goals? You can make that case, and certainly they don't always match up, but then what is intelligence?
I appreciate the evolutionary metaphor, but its also important to remember that candidates can (and do) change strategies and adapt to circumstances. Indeed, I would expect an intelligent candidate to try various different strategies throughout their campaign (and be better at it than their competition). Clinton and Trump both did. Clinton also had arguably much more help from very powerful allies, and had much more funding.
Also, developing limbs is not a choice; campaign strategy is.
How are you judging whether Trump is intelligent or not? Just because his words/actions seem irrational to you doesn't mean they are irrational. Scott Adams was pretty good at predicting Trump's behavior, so Trump's decision made sense to at least someone.
> The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize
Right, and it won't get funded. And in 2020 when the same poor people are still poor, he'll claim it's not his fault, it's because he didn't get to build the wall.
Doesn't the USA have the most prisoners/criminals in the world? They could force them to build and guard the wall instead of the death penalty/prison time. Lets call them the Nights Watch.
I'm guessing that it requires a ton more expensive staff to secure prisoners that are not constrained by cheap walls, barbed wire, bars, and watch towers.
I mean "the wall" as an immigration enforcement mechanicsm. A fence in the middle of the desert does nothing. People have tried to sit down and sketch out what would be needed to actually catch immigrants everywhere, and the law enforcement costs are ridiculous (and in pursuit of an action which would objectively hurt the economy, no less).
Of your list:
The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize. There's no funding for a deportation force and the political optics of goon squads rounding people up is something congress won't do. No one actually wants to yank medical coverage from millions of voters (they'll just let the democrats filibuster it in the senate). There's nothing meaningful to renegotiate in NAFTA, no serious stakeholders have suggestions there. Coal hasn't really gone away, and permiting and regulation changes are going to take longer than four years anyway. "Bring back american companies" is just a fairy tale. Global economics simply doesn't work like that and there's nothing a chief executive can do.
That leaves: Muslim ban. Maybe, at least in some symbolic way. Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, duh. But that's a republican staple and we've survived it before. US deficit spending is actually not nearly so serious a problem as people believe.