By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 11, 2016 |
By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 11, 2016 |
While there is every reason to fear the worst, and the names that have surfaced for roles in Donald Trump’s cabinet have so far confirmed it, we may be able to take some small consolation in this: Donald Trump is a profoundly dumb person. His qualifications for Commander in Chief are basically limited to harassing women from other countries during Miss Universe pageants, and the closest thing he has to governing experience is presiding over a boardroom full of people who attempted to win a competition by selling the most lemonade at makeshift stands around Manhattan.
I have absolutely no evidence to back this statement up, but one would imagine it would take a reasonable amount of intelligence to run an autocracy. So many decisions! So many meetings! What kind of decisions will Donald Trump make when he’s watching cable news over the shoulder of his advisors while they’re trying to talk to him?
Rallies full of adulating supporters are few and far between when it comes to the Presidency. How quickly will Trump lose interest when he has to spend all day answering hard questions and reading boring documents? You guys saw the hair of Presidents Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama before they went into the house, and when they left, right? They all quickly turned white under the weight of the Presidency, and that’s not a weight that Trump can escape. There’s only so much he can delegate to his chosen advisors, many of whom will have no idea what they are doing, either.
When he f*cks up, and he will repeatedly, he can’t blame Crooked Hillary anymore. Cable news, if it ever gains the courage to do so, is going to shred him apart, and every time he turns on the TV, he’s going to have to watch himself fail all over again. I don’t know what that means for his temperament. He may lash out, and he may nuke Seattle (please don’t nuke Seattle), but there’s no way he will enjoy the daily microscopic scrutiny that comes from being President.
As President, he also doesn’t write legislation, which is good because he wouldn’t know how to anyway. More likely, we’re going to have Paul Ryan’s agenda shoved down our throats, which is awful, but not as awful as a Trump’s agenda. And while we don’t hold either of the houses of Congress, we at least have some checks in the Senate with 47 Senators and at least four somewhat reasonable Republicans (Portman, Snowe, Flake, Gardner, Graham?) who will presumably work against Trump’s most egregious policies and hopefully block Supreme Court nominees without, like, a law degree.
I dunno, guys. Being President is hard work. Demagoguery is hard work. Donald Trump is not a fan of hard work unless it comes with large crowds and lock-her up chants. How’s he going to react when half the Congressional chamber doesn’t stand up during his State of the Union speech? He’s not used to a hostile audience, and for four years, it’s going to be a brutally hostile environment. Just ask Barack Obama, who leaves with a 55 percent approval rating and still can’t get anything done.
There’s much to fear about his policies, but there’s some comfort in the notion that his Presidency might collapse under staggering incompetence. Not to minimize the real danger that he poses, but this might (fingers crossed) be the second Selina Meyer term: A Presidency that can’t get anything done because it has no fucking idea what it’s doing. That’s my hope, anyway, and until he puts this little liberal site on his enemy’s list and pulls me out of my house by my molars, I am going to continue highlighting the man’s idiocy, as well as his racist, sexist, xenophobic fear-mongering, and trust that there are enough reasonable minds in Congress to stop him from amending the First Amendment.