• Trump As President?

TRUMP - The analysis begins in earnest as it should. Obama has announced his reelection campaign from the vantage and with the advantage of the bully pulpit. Contenders are lining up as America as America struggles through a long recession, yearning for strong decisive leadership.

Donald Trump has teased the electorate in the past, pretending to seriously consider a run for the White House. This Presidential election finds Republican support for some politically green but very appealing potential candidates. These may well bide their time and wait until 2016 before displaying the audacity to become pretenders to the seat in the Oval Office. Past analysis such as Obama – The First Tell, was helpful in anticipating a President Elect’s road ahead. Trump’s superficial relationship with the voting public has been distorted by its inevitable distance from an unusual celebrity billionaire. Donald Trump has delighted in each moment of attention he has been able to attract by jumping onto the spotlight dot. His reach into our communal consciousness begs a little scrutiny.

• Trump is not ideologically anchored. This moves his appeal factor positively as he will carry little obligation to either political party. He will also present a more refreshing alternative to a public tired of Washington indebtedness to special interests. At the very least, he will be more honest with how he feels, and he will easily be more knowledgeable with on all topics than what we have seen subjected to since the last Presidential election.

• A lack of ideological fervor also makes it more likely that from his perch in the Oval Office he would be a pragmatist. Unlike the embarrassingly far “left” rooted individuals choking the Obama Administration, Trump would most probably pluck the best talent, however it might present itself, wherever he could find it, and in whatever political flavor it might be drenched.

• His insecurities mean his ego can be stroked to get his favor and attention, but he isn't narcissistic. In Trump’s case the insecurities also suggest that he is driven to succeed.

• Trump will surround himself with experienced talent, and it is unlikely that he will punt important decisions down the road, or to someone else, unlike Obama who is clearly controlled by his handlers and seems ready, willing and able, to have others take care of business. If and when America elects Trump, he will be the President, NOT one of his handlers.

• Trump will not chase the Presidency in order to enable a retirement anxious for newfound opulence and luxury. Trump might be seduced, but he won’t be bought.

• Trump will get into the face of anyone in his administration not delivering the goods whether on the economy, on international affairs, and on national affairs. His ego will not allow for anything to screw up. Trump will be a “task master.”

• He'll probably try to figure out how to get his name emblazoned over the White House front door. He has a tendency to “brand” everything he touches. One way or another, he’ll want the world to know “Donald Trump was here.” “Destiny” would be his middle name for at least four years.

• Getting elected would not be Trump's "crowning moment," . . . the four years of his Presidency would be.

• He may not be as bright as Slick Willy Clinton, however he isn't as ideologically rooted, therefore his pragmatism will be more effective and he is likely to be more persuasive. Oh, and he will not tarnish the Oval Office the way Slick did.

• He isn't afraid of hard work, and his track record suggests an interested, inquisitive mind, unlike what we have recognized in the current occupant of the leather chair in the Oval Office.

• Trump likes attention, obviously, but his need to be successful at everything he does, means he’s a workaholic, which would be a welcome change from the reality we have discovered in the incumbent.

• Trump has been in the construction business in New York, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Chicago where he's had to have a close and warm working relationship with the mob since the mob controls such minor and unimportant industries as Concrete. Those “guys” are not the easiest crowd in town to deal with. Trump knows how to ''get things done," and will. When you need a guy, he "knows a guy."

• Trump cleaned his bankers - got the better of them through his now legendary recoveries from the grim shadows of the poorhouse, again, and again, and again. That took unmitigated brass.

• Trump comes across as a bit of a lecher who could give Slick Willy a run for his money, but that’s just a perception. Slick used other people's executive jets to take advantage of impressionable young women, and the whole world knew about it except Hillary. Trump has his own plane.

• Love for America? It is impossible to deny that Trump really loves America, and is passionate about its success and leadership in the world.

• Contributions to both political parties? You're kidding? . . . . Who cares. He bought some support. That's what Congress is there for, . . . to be bought. The results are obvious and ever present.

• Trump has a long track record of being a leader. America is longing for a leader who can deliver more than long words on a teleprompter saying little and delivering less.

• Genuflection – somehow that is not a picture of a President Trump and any foreign head of state which would be served up by the MSM. Ever. Knocking fists? Perhaps. Genuflection? Not much.

• Trump’s fluid I-speak-my-mind-regardless-who-I’m-talking-to approach would be a refreshing alternative from the daily decantings of unrelenting telepromptered dronings we are served from the White House. Not that Trump’s musing are all intelligent, many are fused in common sense, but at least he’s entertaining when he drives off the road.

Elections are greatly influenced by the state of the economy. Regardless what the Administration, or its supportive pundits pretends, . . . the economy continues to be in serious trouble and will be so through the 2012 election. Additionally, there is no will or clarity in the White House, and not much of it in a majority of Congress to deal head-on with the deficit, or the debt, or job creation. Trump provides an alternative which the poles currently suggest is being seriously considered.

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• OBAMA’S NEGOTIATING – WEAK or INEPT?

The culminating event of the primaries will be the upcoming Democratic Convention. Hillary Clinton has evidently taken the upper hand on all fronts in her negotiations with Obama and the Democratic Party. It is now obvious that she came at them hard, heavy and authoritatively. They all caved. What does that say about the decision the Party is about to make? Who exhibits the capacities America desperately requires in its new leader?

We are being subjected to strange whining in the media that the Clintons’ have a need for attention and power, and that the Clintons’ upcoming presentations at the Democratic Convention are nothing more than Hillary and Bill’s egocentric final gasps on the political stage. We are told that the Clintons being given national exposure through use of the podium in Denver, is taking away attention from Obama, and is detrimental to the party. The blame-the-Clintons game is well under way.

We can be swayed by the media and discern this as an annoying last kick at the can by the Clintons, or we can perceive it as an additional window providing insight into two critical players vying for position on the final ticket to the White House. We should also recognize it for what it is, a distinctly adroit maneuver on Hillary’s part, sending notice that she isn’t anyone’s wallflower and remains a proficient force to be contended with on the American political landscape.

Obama could have avoided this very threatening affront to his leadership and capacities, if he had placed Hillary Clinton on the ticket as his Vice President. With Hillary in such position, he would have been in effective control. Why he hasn’t closed that deal is perplexing.

Obama’s political chops may have been earned on the streets of Chicago, but negotiating on the world stage requires an uncommon strength, and will, that goes beyond anything learned. The finer elements are inherent. Pressure tests the mettle. It is therefore to the voters’ advantage that Obama didn’t sweep into victory with an overwhelming number of delegates. All voters are being treated to a display of skills and command of the battlefield that is politics. This will furnish all Americans a finer measure of the candidates, with which to make more educated decisions come the Presidential elections.

It is also inescapable that the Democratic race is not yet determined, nor is an upcoming Democratic White House a foregone conclusion.

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• WHY OBAMA WILL WIN, BUT CAN’T DELIVER

McCain embarrassingly strains at the altar of speech giving, the teleprompter, like a schoolboy forced to stand at the front of the class to explain how he spent his weekend with the family. Cut to Obama, giving a speech, anywhere, doesn’t matter where, and the contrast in presentation is peculiar given that both are running for arguably the most important office in the world. Presentation shouldn’t matter but it does. McCain’s lack of presence makes him seem weak and appear out of his element. That doesn’t mean he is weak, but he is not helping his image in the public’s consciousness.

Even in his attempts to deliver emphatic points, McCain can’t muster conviction. Middle America is feeling uncomfortable on too many fronts and that discomfiture expects some appearance of conviction in a candidate. Only conviction will lead the American taxpayer out of the economic trench currently slowing progress. Only conviction will chart a new course away from the path that for the past eight years has been led by what has become the most despised resident of the White House in the history of that seat of power.

America needs its sense of confidence back. New blood, new thinking, and new ideas will forge a road back to that feeling of confidence. Obama has been able to present such a dream. Real or not, he is the new hip kid on the block who becomes vested with the hope of a nation urgently looking for change. Deep change. Obama becomes anointed as the savior who will rebuild the nation’s current economic mess and international stature.

America is a leader, and America makes its leaders. It dreams them up. They are a product of America’s illusions and aspirations as it goes about its business of working, raising families, and enjoying or stressing about life. America injects the White House with its expectations. America also forgets that the leaders it chooses are human, often with more frailties than the average American, and the expectations are often misplaced. The last two Presidents are examples to remember. Clinton had the potential to become one of the country’s greatest, yet he lacked a profound sense of history and his frailties rendered his Presidency impotent. Bush contrasted Clinton’s intelligence and appeared to be “everyman,” presenting a clean contrast that would not soil the stature of the Oval Office. Bush rapidly devastated both the image and the economy of the country with a lack of understanding on too many elements to be delineated here. Nevertheless, on he marched with confidence that his beliefs, fervor, and convictions were absolute, and that debt financing was his earned capital to be spent. This generation’s great-great grandchildren will be paying for that earned capital.

Obama is the only candidate in whom America can inject an expectation of a refurbished sense of glory. He is a blank canvas that America needs to inject with its anxious anticipation of a positive tomorrow. The actualization of Obama fulfilling expectations, his own or America’s, is an unlikely eventuality. He has set his own bar impossibly low, since he has refrained from making firm and definitive commitments, and has a record of abstaining from making difficult decisions in his short life as a sitting politician. Obama’s backpedaling on Iraq, for example, and announcing that he doesn’t plan on rushing out of the war, further blurs the lines that differentiate him from the competition. We understand. He's running for office and needs to stay neutral and polished, ... however, where's the passion for something specific? Where are the principles?

Bush has pushed America into a corner from whence it expects to be led toward lighter days. The new and overwhelming expectations are foisted on another human being with all the limitations and baggage we would rather not notice. As always, the average middle income tax payer will continue to do the heavy lifting. And also as always, in that expectation, America will not be disappointed.

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