Trump for President?
- J.C. Guest
- Aug 17, 2015
- 2 min read
Like a lot of people, when I first heard that Donald Trump was running for president I laughed. Some of his comments—and make no mistake, much of what he says is outlandish—are ideally suited for a reality TV show, like The Apprentice. So I wrote him off as a serious candidate, concluding that he could only make a circus of our election process. But isn’t our election process already a circus? For decades I’ve asked who in their right mind would run for president. Then it struck me: no one who runs for office is in their right mind. Listening to Trump I’m hearing a lot of truths, truths that I’d like to say on the floor of Congress, not that I’d ever be invited to speak before government: Washington is corrupt; our elected officials are merely puppets of the corporations who donate to their campaigns expecting favors in return.
What I hear from other candidates is mostly what they think I want to hear, which changes from day to day depending on what group in front of whom they’re speaking. I long ago concluded that a candidate running for public office doesn’t have to believe what he or she says, they just have to convince the voters that they believe it.
Donald Trump continues to surprise a lot of people—voters, the media, and other candidates. When another candidate says something foolish we question whether he or she is the right person to lead our country. When Trump says something foolish we eat it up and say, “That’s just Donald being Donald.”
As of this writing Trump continues to lead in the polls—which means nothing more than a year away from the election. Were the nomination held tomorrow he likely would win; although numbers also suggest he would lose to Clinton were the election held next week. But Clinton has her own issues, demons, and skeletons in her closet. She may soon become a non-factor should Bernie Sanders’ following continue to grow, not to mention the investigation into her use of a private server for government email.
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