Being POTUS is hard

[usmbguest5318]

"Donald Trump said being US president was harder than he thought" That is among today's headlines. Well, duh!

I'm not surprised that Trump is finding it hard, and normally, I wouldn't chide someone for thinking that. Indeed, I don't chide Trump for saying it. On the contrary, it may be among the few things I've heard him say that doesn't portend profound naivete on his part.

The thing is that time and time again, people were telling him he did not know what he was talking about regarding many of the things he said on the campaign trail. In spite of all the warnings, Trump persisted in thinking he knew better than the people who have experience governing and living in the political spotlight. It appears that only of late may his hubris be attenuating to the point that he sees that his critics did know what they were talking about.

 

[usmbguest5318]

From the article:

One group that probably wasn't surprised that Trump wasn't prepared? The majority of Americans. ... most Americans viewed Clinton as more prepared than Trump by a wide margin, including among Democrats and independents. A much greater number of Republicans were willing to call Clinton more qualified than Democrats were Trump.

And yet enough Americans voted for him to put him in the WH. To this day, whereas I have no trouble understanding why Trump wanted to be POTUS, I do not understand why so many people actually voted for him. I think Johnson too would have had a learning curve to crest, but nowhere near as steep a one. I wasn't keen on Clinton, but I would not have been fearful for the state of the nation/world had she won.

Just what will/does it take for people, as goes politics and governance, to see beyond party? Surely at some point people feel compelled to say to themselves, "Okay, the fact that "so and so" is a Republican/Democrat and I am too is not a good reason to accept that what they are saying to me genuinely makes sense." Where and when does one reach that point?

The only group that consistently viewed him as qualified to hold the position were the working-class white voters that constituted the core of his support from early in his candidacy.

Why am I not surprised that the only segment of the U.S. that may even less well informed about "everything" than Trump was the one that most vehemently backed him?

At [one point, Trump] revealed that it took a conversation with the president of China to realize that the situation on the Korean peninsula was "not so easy."

Really? The man accepted that input from the leader of a competing foreign nation, but when his own countrymen had previously proffered the same thoughts, he belittle them and rejected their input. And why?

• Because he was so suffused with sloth to do some reading-up on the matter himself despite the readily and abundantly available body of credible material on the matter?
  • North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation
    
  • The Collapse OF North Korea: A Prospect to Celebrate or Fear?
    
  • Unraveling North Korea ’s Preferences and Managing its Nuclear Threat
    
  • Juche and North Korea’s Global Aspirations
    
  • Japan's Negative Economic Diplomacy Towards North Korea
    
  • Understanding North Korea
    
  • Facing the Facts: Towards a New U.S. north Korea Policy
    
  • Xi Jinping’s Foreign Policy towards North Korea
    
  • North Korea’s Provocation and Escalation Calculus: Dealing with the Kim Jong-un Regime
    
  • The China–North Korea Relationship
    
  • Sanctions’ Role in Dealing with the North Korean Problem

"North Korea" is just one topic for which there is ample material Trump could have consumed so he could make himself at least as knowledgeable as a layman might reasonably be. That way when his advisors -- CIA, State Dept. professionals, National Security Council, etc. -- provided him with details he could not have obtained as a private citizen, he'd have been prepared to assess it from a position of "intellectual portfolio."

The fact is that Trump had for nearly a decade been "toying" with the notion of running for POTUS. Did he use those years to "get up to speed" as much as possible on the matters he'd have to handle as POTUS? No, and there's really no excuse, other than hubris and indolence, for his not having done so.


Aside:
I guess now's a good time to point out the that Bannon was removed from the Security Council right after Trump met with Xi Jinping. That was nothing other than Trump realizing Bannon was disserving him and had no business on the NSC because it became clear to him that Bannon is as naive and misguided as as is the day long about "what's going on." Bannon obviously has plenty he's willing to say, but little of it is worth hearing and heeding.

There's an element of surprise in Trump's comments, a hint of bafflement that having responsibility for the welfare of 320 million people entwined in a global economy and international relationships might end up being trickier than running a real estate and branding shop from midtown Manhattan.

The POTUS' job is to catalyze good things happening and to preempt and/or mitigate the risk of bad things happening. One, no one, can do that until they fully understand the situation, and common sense isn't enough to accord to one such an awareness on matters presidential.

There's no doubt in my mind that some lessons learned from running real estate and entertainment businesses can be extrapolated to managing national and global issues. The thing is that one cannot know which of them do and when they aptly apply until one understands the issues. Only then can one cogently conclude that it is appropriate to use "this" tactic that worked really well in "the business," though not what's historically been done, may, because the dynamics and relevantly extant details are quite similar, bear fruit where the "conventional" approaches have not.​

 

[NYcarbineer]

Trump is crying about having won, because the job is too hard.

I can't think of a bigger whiner in the Universe.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Trump's presidential run was a textbook publicity stunt that went terribly wrong...

...and now he is admitting it.

 

[NYcarbineer]

lol, now it begins to become clear why Trump got more and more outrageous and loony as the campaign went on...

...he was desperate to lose.

The funniest part is, RWnuts are even loonier. They wouldn't let him lose.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Trump is crying about having won, because the job is too hard.

Maybe. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that be so, but I really can't say if it is.

Trump's presidential run was a textbook publicity stunt that went terribly wrong......and now he is admitting it.

I agree with you on the "publicity stunt" part, but it didn't "go wrong." He did win the election.

In 20/20 hindsight, one, Trump perhaps too, might qualify his having won as his not "having thought carefully enough about what he wished for," but his tactics worked. He most certainly did accomplish what he set out to do. Like him or not, one can neither in good conscience nor in good sense deny him that.

The position in which Trump now finds himself is much like that of dog barking at a cornered cottonmouth. The dog didn't "have to" chase the snake, but it couldn't help it and not do. Now, the dog's "got" the snake, but the snake is striking back, and if it connects, the dog is done for regardless of whether the snake survives.

it begins to become clear why Trump got more and more outrageous and loony as the campaign went on......he was desperate to lose.

I think Trump became increasingly outrageous because he observed that in doing so, he got ever more free press coverage, which, though it came with critiques and cries about the absurdity of many of his remarks, it also provided a free and frequent means of getting heard by potential supporters, who, quite frankly, didn't know any more than Trump about what it takes to do the job of POTUS. Trump was spot on, given the nature of the electorate, about a way to win the job, but then, and still, he does not know how to do the job he's won.

I think about the presidency in much the same way I look at advancement in any profession. In mine, consulting, if one is, say a senior manager aiming to be made partner, one must perform all the work a partner does, as well as a partner does, before one will be promoted to partner and given the responsibility and authority a partner has. That is so at every level, for good reason: it doesn't make sense to promote someone into a position at which they cannot succeed. People get promoted because they'd demonstrated they can do the work at the next level, not merely because they good at their current level.

it begins to become clear why Trump got more and more outrageous and loony as the campaign went on......he was desperate to lose.

Reading that made me chuckle, and maybe it's so, but don't think he was.

No matter whether during the campaign he began to want to lose, he didn't. That he didn't means that to the extent that as POTUS he "loses" or fails, the U.S. does so right along with him. That's not going to be a good thing for anyone, but it'll be least good for his most ardent supporters -- working class voters who placed their faith in him. Those people don't have a "safety net." When the bottom falls out of the basket, the apples at the top are not the first ones bruised or broken.