Trump and Trade
This morning brought the surprising news that, according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is running second among GOP presidential hopefuls, at 17%, behind Mitt Romney's 21%.
I am far from a fan of the obnoxious, egomaniacal Trump, but his rise in the polls could be good news: The issue Trump has been pushing most assiduously is the damage our trade policies are causing America, especially our enormous trade deficit with China. If Trump causes other GOP candidates to begin addressing the trade issue, breaking the hold that free trade orthodoxy has on the upper reaches of the GOP, he will have performed a far greater service to our country than anyone could reasonably have predicted. Ordinary Americans overwhelmingly recognize the great damage free trade has caused our economy. It is about time that an enterprising politician decided to catch up with them.
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The fact that Trump talks about Obama's birth certificate alone guarantees he will have no chance at getting the nomination.
At least a big shakeup! Ron Paul in the front. Trump on the left flank and Rand on the right. And the tea party guerilla watching the rear. How about a Paul/Trump ticket?
"The issue Trump has been pushing most assiduously is the damage our trade policies are causing America, especially our enormous trade deficit with China."
I think Mr. Piatak is engaging in wishful thinking here. The issue Trump has been pushing most assiduously is the Obama birth certificate issue. I don't think Trump is serious about running--he has done this before back in 1999 when the Reform Party nomination was actually worth having.
I don't think Bob has scene or heard many Trump interviews or speeches --even the one linked! The birth certificate issue is an aside that Trump mentioned doubts about and the main stream media keeps asking him about _only because_ Trump, unlike the overwhelming majority of professional politicians (even those ostensibly opposed to Mr. Obama), doesn't back off his doubts; doesn't just fold. If Trump is asked about his general views or gives a speech, he addresses the issues, including and primarily, as Mr. Piatak correctly avers, trade policy.
Other than being a blowhard, a bankrupt business man, and media 'celebrity' its hard to see how Trump is qualified to be President. It'd be nice if his high poll numbers were due to his trade policies, but given the average Republican, its more likely due to name recognition.
Republicans always have a weakness for Generals and Corporate execs until know them better.
Trump may lend some legitimacy to the issue of Obama's birth certificate. Why does he persist in not releasing it?
The bad news about Trump is that he favors the no-fly zone in Libya.
The Birther debate is dullest thing since the Phlame affair. A non-issue kept alive by the Left to discredit the Right. Next we'll be discussing the John Birch Society.
Other than being a blowhard, a bankrupt business man, and media ‘celebrity’ its hard to see how Trump is qualified to be President.
Given the character, pedigree and intellectual levels of our last half-dozen Presidents, it is hard to justify the claim that Trump would need more to be a qualified candidate for President.
I think Tom is right. The popularity of the trade issue, like the immigration issue, is a constant. Large numbers of people aren't being heard on the issue and are willing support anyone who raises it, even someone like Trump.
I hope some more credible candidate raises the same concerns.
Mr. Piatak,
Thank you for pointing out this one side of Trump. In 1999 he tried to run against Pat Buchanan and Jesse Ventura for the Reform Party nomination. It would have helped Mr. Buchanan as you well know but both of them dodged the humiliation of debating a man of Pat's caliber. I think given the field of candidates we wil hear from in this next election, Trump has potential to be refreshing like Ron Paul was for the GOP and Al Sharpton was for the Democrats.
I suspect the GOP has already settled on Romney and will throw in some ding-bat like Palin or Bachman as a parody for the right.
If all goes as planned Obama should have a tough go of it but will probably win on the strength of his rhetoric, deals he cut for bombing Libya, the anarchists who will be exposed for subsidizing the Tea Party and no limit on foreign contributions for Presidential elections. Also I think it will help Obama to have Karl Rove running strategy for the GOP. But I am no judge.
Basically, Trump is being another Perot.
I don’t think this title, or article could be any more disingenuous! What a crock! OBVIOUSLY, to anyone who knows anything about the Tea Party knows Ron Paul is EASILY the top choice for president in 2012! LMAO! Ron Paul IS the Tea Party! HAHAHA! I can see right through this establishment facade, and so can any real Tea Partier! What a joke!
Please, ANY website that runs favorable articles on Trump drops to the bottom of my daily reading list. He is not a conservative in any way, shape or form. He may say that he is, but talk is cheap. More and more, after a week on vacation with no computer access, I am regretting getting back online.
If celebs and Don are an indication of the Tea Party mentality, that movement is doomed. How is Tom's article, prefaced by "I am far from a fan of tbe obnoxious, egomaniacal Trump" an article favorable to Trump? And as for celebs, I thought Boys Life had gone out of business long ago. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! So there. I win.
#12 and #13
If you would know anything about Chronicles you would know not to post such nonsense. Irony and wit is surely a part of your understanding? There is no poster here who takes Donald Trump seriously except as elevator music on the way to the basement. Evidently you are the type who would prefer to leap from the tall building instead of walking to the nearest exit.
"The issue Trump has been pushing most assiduously is the damage our trade policies are causing America, especially our enormous trade deficit with China."
Actually Tom, the issue that Trump has been pushing most assiduously recently is the "birther" issue, and if my sense from roaming the blogosphere is correct, he is garnering A LOT of good will among a certain niche of people because of it. And since this has been the issue he has been all over the news about recently, I see no reason to believe that his rise in the polls is not at least partially related to his willingness to champion the issue. While his willingness to embrace the issue may well put a ceiling on his support, it has also gained him some and distinguished him from the rest of the field.
If Trump can stay away from the highly implausible allegation that Obama was born in Kenya, and just press the issue that Obama may be hiding something and should open his records including but not limited to his long form birth certificate, I think he can continue to gain some traction on the issue. (I'm not sure he can avoid the Kenya issue because he speaks what's on his mind and isn't particularly good at nuance.) Obama's refusal to release many of his records strikes a lot of entirely reasonable people as fishy. In fact, it is my contention that curiosity about Obama's records is the natural response that has to be actively suppressed by Obama defensiveness (on the left) or fear of conspiracy taint (on the right). There are a lot of people who are extremely frustrated by the deliberate incuriosity of the MSM and the squeamishness of the mainstream right and are desperately seeking a "big name" champion for the cause of openness. Trump is filling that role, even if somewhat ham handedly, and is reaping the benefit of doing so.
"If celebs and Don are an indication of the Tea Party mentality, that movement is doomed."
Actually Dr. Fleming, Trump clearly has some vested interests spooked and the long knives are already starting to come out. Celebs and Don are not an indication of the Tea Party mentality. They are ideological stakeholders (either paid or voluntary) who see Trump as a threat. Have Don and celebs4truth commented here before, or did they just show up when Chronicles posted a semi-positive blurb about Trump? Makes you go hmmm... They are like the anti-Ron Paul snipers who show up any time Ron Paul is getting some good press with their drive by comments. While Paul and Trump are miles apart on the issues, both of them spook the powers that be, and we can't have that.
Dr Red understands these people better than I ever will. I will say this, in defense of the Tea partiers: it is easy to distinguish betwee the supporters of the T P movement you meet in real life--mostly decent people who are fed up--and the Internet trolls who give them a bad rap. I do not say the TP has the answers. By and large they do not, but they are angry about some of the right things. What I fear is that they will be victimized by the conservative movement. That is almost inevitable.
As one who normally turns off or turns away when I hear or read of the ubiquitous Mr. Trump, I am pleased that Mr. Piatak has mentioned the Donald's interest in US trade policy. This is so important to our nation, that I believe that it does not matter whether Trump actually cares about it or whether it is higher on his list of talking points than Obama's birth certificate; just having this elephant released into the room is good enough. Perhaps more people will begin to care about it and maybe other pols will take up the gauntlet.
Since both major parties are responsible for our lop-sided trade policies and our massive trade deficit, neither wants to see this issue discussed. Our major media outlets will happily focus on the "birther" business when talking to Trump because it captures the all too brief attention span of more viewers, viewers who prefer not to pay attention to the more intricate problems that will largely determine the future prosperity of the US.
Here's one funny thing.
Despite talks of how rich businessmen manipulate politics, such people end up being marginal figures quite often. Nigel Farage of Britain, a man with good private sector success, gets a lot of press but is fighting all alone as MEP. Ross Perot didn't win Presidential elections. Chinese billionaires live in fear of their government, which may even kill them and frame suicide on them. Russian billionaires are in a similar but not as grave a situation. Some might argue that is for the best. I don't know. Maybe they are only as bad as the other options.
Only Berlusconi and FDR come to mind as people who were either extremely wealthy or powerful businesspersons and who also reached top national leadership. But Berlusconi joined politics during a time when his business was almost about to collapse, so he joined when his business days were about to come to an end, although his business soared afterwards. With FDR, I find incredible that a inherited wealth man raised by governesses in several homes across several countries is celebrated as a hero of the working and middle class. That too without being exactly a "class traitor" either.
What if Donald Trump achieves FDR's populism?
The Obama Administration, especially its economic team, is practically an alumni club of Goldman Sachs. Individual businessmen are much less important than the networks they constitute.
One cannot put all the big bourgeois in one category. Ross Perot, like Henry Ford before him, was representative of a kind of national capitalism under threat by transnational capitalism.
Chinese billionaires since the late 1990s can now join the Chinese Communist Party, so the situation there is much more ambiguous.
Regarding Russia, the country was ruled by 7 oligarchs with Yeltsin as a figurehead until Putin launched a coup against them. Oligarchs are still important in the Russian economy (Abramovich from 2000-2008 was Governor of a Chukotka while living in London...), but the balance of power has changed significantly since the times of Yeltsin.
I should say, regarding Ross Perot, that like Henry Ford, he was representative of an industrial capitalism under threat by finance capitalism. However, the struggle of industrial vs. finance capital is always a rearguard action because in a capitalist society where the merchant values are supreme, it is the banker that tends to accumulate the most power.
"With FDR, I find incredible that a inherited wealth man raised by governesses in several homes across several countries is celebrated as a hero of the working and middle class."
There is nothing surprising there. In the monarchies in Europe and Asia, back when these monarchies actually ruled, the king or emperor was always seen as the defender of the common people against the excesses of the nobles. It is nobles who cry "Down with the Tyrant!". The common people, on the contrary, exclaim "If only the King knew!".
FDR was no king. He was merely very very rich. In other words, closer to the noble?
But he positioned himself like a monarch, against the plutocracy, and on the side of the common people. Remember that speech "These economic royalists hate me, and I welcome their hatred...". Whether what he did was right or not is another question, but he was perceived as a monarchial figure and that largely explains his popularity at the time.
The US Presidency was envisioned as the "monarchial" element in a constitution along with "aristocratic" and "democratic" elements. Arguably, the problem is that the Office of the President has accumulated more and more monarchial pretensions without ever consistently assuming monarchial obligations, because the President is ultimately still a creature of an electoral system controlled by moneyed interests.
One mustn't be misled by FDR's rhetoric. At the time, John Flynn was quite correct in noting his avarice and his defense of Wall Street. Nothing better has been published on FDR than his Country Squire in the White House. Julius Caesar, a patrician from a fairly no-account family on his father's side but of quite distinguished and wealthy maternal antecedents, posed as the people's friend in order to seize power from aristocratic rivals. There is also the infamous case of the Duc d'Orléans. We have had rich presidents obviously, TR and JFK. In general, though, the wealthy find it perfectly easy to work through their representatives. There is more to American politics than mere defense of the super-rich, but it is, nonetheless, an important pessure.
Oh my goodness, Dr. Fleming, I end up finding this book on public domain online, and I am already 20 pages into it.
This is amazing. One would expect his Republican opponents would want to wrongly smear him as a spoilt, pampered, sheltered child, but that is exactly what he was, according to the professed New Deal Democrat who wrote this book. This man had no interaction with children of his age, grew up with no ambition, and was placed in courses and jobs in which he was not interested. He sounds wholly like a lifelong daydreamer whose life had to be organized by other people.
He was, shockingly, a Mama's boy, whose mother ruled over him with an iron fist long after he turned to his 20s! Granted we have many mama's boys in joint families here in the third world, but that is no later than the age of 21. She even built a house to be close to her son.
Not surprisingly, he was *dumped* into politics. I, and perhaps only I, presume that his law firm was so annoyed with an unqualified person stringpulled into their office with no hope of a serious career, that they encouraged him to run for state legislator and get off their backs. Like many leaders, he entered politics not because he had any interest in it, but somehow chanced on it.
Perhaps the comparison to a TV showman like Trump would be unfair, because there is clear indication that Trump had to work much harder than FDR ever did. Even Ross Perot was a self made billionaire, not an inherited "County Squire".
That progressives today praise FDR is a sign that they do so not for what he was, for they would have hated the man if he belonged to their generation, but because of what he represented. I am so going to finish this entertaining book.
I think Trump is promoting Trump. He has a lot of skeletons in his closet, far too many to ever be elected. That said, at least we would have a president that knows how to handle banruptcy. About the only guys i like for the job are the Paul's, but is America ready for one of them?
Trump/bockman ticket is it,every other candadit
Trump/bachmann ticket is it,every other candidate has much more baggage as just being part of this establishment for the last tens years means they are all part of the problem,Donald Trump wipes them all away.We elected a candidate that was hope and change and look at what we have.Trump is familiar and consistent on his comments and free trade that have brought us nothing but a bankrupt country.Wake up,it will be you ,me and all of America in the streets if we do not get this next election right,they are trying hard to stay in power and if we let them nothing will change but our country to a third world nation,stop Soros,Obama now, with a not bought &independantly wealthy candidate that will have the best chance to bring our industries , country back to life,liberty and pursuit of happiness in these 50 states of ours!
I don't know in which of Flynn's books he puts it, but he even shows how FDR stole the White House stamp collection and got lucrative positions for his worthless sons. Flynn was not a New Dealer but a sort of liberal who strongly objected to crony capitalism. He had been business editor for the New Republic, and his criticisms so infuriated the President that he personally tried to have him blacklisted everywhere. There is something a bit too strident in Flynn's writing--it is the sort of style that Luce's writers aspired to--but he did a great deal of good in his time, though I think he erred in disbanding the NYC America First group and having the mailing list destroyed.
Maybe Michelle B could run to replace Michelle O as first lady.
"FDR stole the White House stamp collection and got lucrative positions for his sons....."
This reminds me of more recent appointments such as Mr. Bush appointing Colin Powell's son as Fed Comm.Director who helped assist in the further consolidation of our current major media outlets to about four or five major conglomerates. I hear that it will take a billion dollars for the next contenders to run for President. Imagine defining the parameters of the election topics, getting paid handsomely for advertising the said election, and then benefitting from the outcome regardless of who wins.
"I think he erred in disbanding the NYC America First group and having the mailing list destroyed."
Dr. Fleming, what? Very interesting. Why did he do this? Trying to protect the group members from blacklists?
As an older American all funding for political (you may put in
your own description) is no more than the vanity of vanities
for all the ones who indulge themselves. Thanks for the essay here.
My understanding is that Flynn thought the Committee's function had ceased and that it would be wrong to revive it as a postwar conservative movement. I also think he was disturbed by the rightwingers in the group--Flynn denounced Lindbergh's speech, which other members (including Dudley Swim, as I recall) found unexceptionable.
This may shewd some light on why Trump is doing so well. The Republican establishment in my State kept Ron Paul's name off of the straw poll.
As a social conservative I nonetheless find Donald Trump's announcement a breath of fresh air. I would support Trump in a heartbeat against any GOP liberal or two-faced conservative. That is, against anyone but Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, or a couple others. Why? As the son of a Georgia girl I've got a bit of rebel pride in me. Play me for a fool and then tell me I've got no better option than to vote for you and you won't get my vote ever again EVER, even if the alternative is voting for Jane Fonda. As Dr. Wilson notes we really need to get rid of the GOP. Trump, for all his banality, has charisma and guts. His successes would reveal before the electorate the hollowness and enfeeblement of Rupert Murdoch's GOP, a party which makes its living by offering a sham opposition. Nobody respects a weasel,not even those who hire him.
If refused the nomination Trump threatens to run as a third party candidate. Given his money and celebrity it's a plausible threat, and I would love to see it. If the finish were (1) Obama, (2) Trump, (3) Romney, that would speak volumes about the irrelevance of the GOP. There would be a reorganization and out of the ruins perhaps a genuine conservative party would emerge.