I am tempted to see Donald Trump as a Grey Anti-Champion. Even before the inauguration he does much that worsens the political climate by becoming even more divisive and choosing to select almost entirely from among extremists. He has done nothing to tone down the white-supremacist rhetoric just short of KKK bigotry. His "my way or the highway" approach that one can tolerate in the private sector because there is always some other possible employer cannot be done at a national level because changing citizenship is not easy in either administrative or personal terms.
He begins with a very bad honeymoon. It might not be like the white bride announcing to her bigoted husband that she is already pregnant by a black man or a husband telling his naive wife that he is a compulsive gambler who smuggles drugs to finance his bad habit and expects her to become a mule in the drug trade... That's when parents get a call from a bus station in the middle of nowhere asking to get the offended or endangered spouse out of the situation. Things are not starting well. He has less than even a plurality support in the popular vote, and he acts as if he is the only possible focus of political support.
He begins badly by recent standards:
Favorable Ratings of Recent Presidents-Elect
Donald Trump 2016 Nov 9-13 42 55
Barack Obama 2008 Nov 7-9 68 27
George W. Bush 2000 Dec 15-17 59 36
Bill Clinton 1992 Nov 10-11 58 35
http://www.gallup.com/poll/197576/trump-...aign=tiles
Dubya may have proved to be one of the worse Presidents in American history, but that assessment is only after the fact (two bungled wars, and an economic meltdown that might have been even more devastating had it not been for the military spending). But he started out about as popular as Bill Clinton did. Like Trump this year, Dubya also won the Presidency despite losing the electoral vote. He still started out far more popular than Donald Trump -- perhaps because he did not express ethnic and religious bigotry and did not show early signs of a dictatorial style of administration.
Donald Trump has no political capital except the power that he wields or is allowed to wield. It will be difficult (if not impossible) for him to mend ways with people that he smeared on grounds of ethnicity or religion. He made contradictory and thus incompatible promises to usually-hostile parts of the electorate to get elected, and he will have to choose one to betray one group of people to whom he made promises to satisfy others. Just think of what that will do to approval ratings. He has chosen to surround himself with abrasive extremists, people who completely deny any the validity of the opinion of anyone who has any divergence in opinion. Such people demand blind loyalty from a People not accustomed to showing blind loyalty to a leader and his immediate subordinates who order the People about.
Of course, it is possible that the President will force his agenda along with the aid of an obedient Congress because the Republican party is now an authoritarian right-wing Party with no room for dissent on substantive issues, especially if the Republicans remove the filibuster in the Senate. Then the United States of America becomes effectively a dominant-Party state in which the political minority is rendered irrelevant. Perhaps with Congress enacting legislation that criminalizes dissent, establishes a secret police (an internal equivalent of the CIA), or controls the Democratic Party, America might have a political system in which political lockstep creates an efficient political system that gets things done -- if not with much concern for public opinion.
Even so, a recent Gallup poll shows that although the current President has an approval rating of 56% after starting having an approval rating of 62% in February 2009. To be sure, any President will have some ups and downs, and President Obama has had an approval rating as low as 40%. Of course there will be events, including legislative failures and international scrapes. But 40% is as low as it went for Obama.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup...roval.aspx
Should there be a free election in America for the Presidency in 2020, then Americans will have much nostalgia for Barack Obama, and the Democratic nominee who most reminds America of the Obama who won decisively in 2008 will get the nomination and will win in a landslide, winning states that Republicans just do not win. The urban-rural and the regional divides will remain -- and perhaps even intensify. But Americans will be sick of 'reckless', 'abrasive', 'extremist', and 'dictatorial', and what follows Donald Trump could be the Grey Champion.
He begins with a very bad honeymoon. It might not be like the white bride announcing to her bigoted husband that she is already pregnant by a black man or a husband telling his naive wife that he is a compulsive gambler who smuggles drugs to finance his bad habit and expects her to become a mule in the drug trade... That's when parents get a call from a bus station in the middle of nowhere asking to get the offended or endangered spouse out of the situation. Things are not starting well. He has less than even a plurality support in the popular vote, and he acts as if he is the only possible focus of political support.
He begins badly by recent standards:
Favorable Ratings of Recent Presidents-Elect
Donald Trump 2016 Nov 9-13 42 55
Barack Obama 2008 Nov 7-9 68 27
George W. Bush 2000 Dec 15-17 59 36
Bill Clinton 1992 Nov 10-11 58 35
http://www.gallup.com/poll/197576/trump-...aign=tiles
Dubya may have proved to be one of the worse Presidents in American history, but that assessment is only after the fact (two bungled wars, and an economic meltdown that might have been even more devastating had it not been for the military spending). But he started out about as popular as Bill Clinton did. Like Trump this year, Dubya also won the Presidency despite losing the electoral vote. He still started out far more popular than Donald Trump -- perhaps because he did not express ethnic and religious bigotry and did not show early signs of a dictatorial style of administration.
Donald Trump has no political capital except the power that he wields or is allowed to wield. It will be difficult (if not impossible) for him to mend ways with people that he smeared on grounds of ethnicity or religion. He made contradictory and thus incompatible promises to usually-hostile parts of the electorate to get elected, and he will have to choose one to betray one group of people to whom he made promises to satisfy others. Just think of what that will do to approval ratings. He has chosen to surround himself with abrasive extremists, people who completely deny any the validity of the opinion of anyone who has any divergence in opinion. Such people demand blind loyalty from a People not accustomed to showing blind loyalty to a leader and his immediate subordinates who order the People about.
Of course, it is possible that the President will force his agenda along with the aid of an obedient Congress because the Republican party is now an authoritarian right-wing Party with no room for dissent on substantive issues, especially if the Republicans remove the filibuster in the Senate. Then the United States of America becomes effectively a dominant-Party state in which the political minority is rendered irrelevant. Perhaps with Congress enacting legislation that criminalizes dissent, establishes a secret police (an internal equivalent of the CIA), or controls the Democratic Party, America might have a political system in which political lockstep creates an efficient political system that gets things done -- if not with much concern for public opinion.
Even so, a recent Gallup poll shows that although the current President has an approval rating of 56% after starting having an approval rating of 62% in February 2009. To be sure, any President will have some ups and downs, and President Obama has had an approval rating as low as 40%. Of course there will be events, including legislative failures and international scrapes. But 40% is as low as it went for Obama.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup...roval.aspx
Should there be a free election in America for the Presidency in 2020, then Americans will have much nostalgia for Barack Obama, and the Democratic nominee who most reminds America of the Obama who won decisively in 2008 will get the nomination and will win in a landslide, winning states that Republicans just do not win. The urban-rural and the regional divides will remain -- and perhaps even intensify. But Americans will be sick of 'reckless', 'abrasive', 'extremist', and 'dictatorial', and what follows Donald Trump could be the Grey Champion.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.