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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Author: albaby1 SILVER
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Number: of 84350 
Subject: Re: An Early Test of Trump's Presidenting Ability
Date: 01/07/25 12:23 PM
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The main thing he is/was good at is licensing his name. And role playing a hard-ass on The Apprentice. I don't think either of those skills are going to benefit America from his perch as President.

I think this overly minimizes the considerable political skills he's demonstrated in his ten years in public life. He's an enormously capable self-marketer - astonishingly adept at harvesting free media, cultivating an image of himself among his customers/supporters, and recognizing far better than most what media channels are effective in this day and age at reaching his target audience. Democrats probably don't credit it, since he's not speaking to their audience - but he's better at comms than many other modern politicians. He's also fantastic at the "sharp elbows" style of politics - we disparage that today as being "autocratic," but it's been practiced by successful politicians for time immemorial (legendarily, LBJ was a noted arm-twister).

What he hasn't shown himself to have is a good sense of how the federal government actually is structured. It's not a private business where the President is an analog to the CEO, and where you can entirely change what the federal government does just by winning your single election. That complicates your ability to get the government to do what you want it to do, and you have to be adept at working within those constraints.

He was not adept at so doing during his first term. It remains to be seen whether he will have improved. How (or if) he manages the current divide in Congress over reconciliation strategy will be instructive.
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This community has written 84,309 posts about US Policy. The article-length ones it recommended most:
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