{"id":6591,"date":"2017-01-17T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/outside-editorial-trumps-will-be-a-presidency-like-youve-never-seen-before\/"},"modified":"2017-01-17T09:00:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T17:00:35","slug":"outside-editorial-trumps-will-be-a-presidency-like-youve-never-seen-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/opinion\/outside-editorial-trumps-will-be-a-presidency-like-youve-never-seen-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside Editorial: Trump’s will be a presidency ‘like you’ve never seen before’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune:<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a phrase President-elect Donald Trump uses when he is promising greatness for America in some area or other but can\u2019t seem to capture the breadth of what he thinks he will achieve. That\u2019s when he tells his audience he will get results \u201clike you\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

He made that outlandish prediction about caring for veterans, enforcing the Iran nuclear deal, defending America\u2019s Christian heritage, adding auto industry jobs, even \u201cwinning\u201d in general. \u201cWe will start winning again and winning like you\u2019ve never seen before,\u201d he said the night before his election victory.<\/p>\n

Trump at heart is a creative, aggressive salesman who sees little value in restraining the message he delivers. Sometimes he plays the role of carnival barker, sometimes attack dog. Either way, he\u2019d rather be forceful than accurate. Yet one of his pet boasts is also a true assessment of his unlikely political rise: Donald Trump will be a president like you\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n

That is not an invitation to panic. It is a reminder to keep perspective after Jan. 20, when he takes office as the nation\u2019s outlier-in-chief.<\/p>\n

Trump comes to the White House with no previous experience in government, military or national security affairs. He ran on the Republican ticket but values his own business judgment above party particulars. He is bombastic, intemperate, vain, mercurial and hyperbolic. He is also savvy, confident and instinctual. For millions of Americans, he embodies liberation from a suffocating era of insider governance. To these optimistic voters, his presidency brims with possibility.<\/p>\n

Trump was all of this on the campaign trail, plus boorish and bigoted. He was also entertaining, enervating, combative and, to some, inspiring. Do not expect him to change once he is president. After all, he won. Voters were drawn to his outsider candidacy because he is a colorful deal-maker who doesn\u2019t behave like anyone they\u2019ve seen in the Oval Office. Trump supporters did not want a cookie-cutter president. They wanted someone who is different – and that\u2019s who the country will get, deep flaws and all.<\/p>\n

One of the early flashes of Trump\u2019s unconventional approach came days after his election when he appeared to breach diplomatic protocol by taking a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan\u2019s president. Under the peculiar rules of engagement with China, the United States does not officially recognize the government in Taipei, so speaking to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was either a shocking provocation or a monumental screw-up – but only if the president-elect meant to follow precedent. Trump did not. He took the call and put China on notice that he can play hardball. It was a creative move, and low-risk because he\u2019s not yet commander-in-chief. Maybe it gives Trump a tiny edge in future negotiations with Beijing. A little shocking, but mostly just different.<\/p>\n

On the economy, Trump has even more permission to be unorthodox because he takes office on a feverish promise to be \u201cthe greatest jobs producer that God ever created.\u201d He\u2019s not even in the job yet, and he\u2019s badgering American companies to preserve or build factories on U.S. soil. Presidents normally don\u2019t do this because in America the government does not set industrial policy. Ultimately, meddling in the work of CEOs is a sideshow to Trump\u2019s best chances to boost job growth: working with the Republican-controlled Congress to roll back corporate taxes as part of a larger tax reform package while paring back burdensome federal regulations. He has a shot at an immigration deal as well, though he\u2019s chosen to package it with an unlikely plan to build a wall along the southern border and send Mexico the bill.<\/p>\n

His legacy as president may come down to how much he listens to his advisers. Trump sounded foolish in his benign take on Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin and harsh skepticism of America\u2019s intelligence agencies. But at least two of his cabinet picks, Rex Tillerson (secretary of state) and James Mattis (defense), have contradicted him. In confirmation hearings they sounded alarms on Russia and several other questionable Trump notions about foreign policy. Their counsel will be crucial.<\/p>\n

Trump is a singular figure, yet only to a point. Every president comes to the office with an ambitious agenda and only the faintest notion of what the job entails. Like every one of his predecessors, the 45th president of the United States will learn to make wise decisions, or he will fail at the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune: There\u2019s a phrase President-elect Donald Trump uses when he is promising greatness for America in some area or other but can\u2019t seem to capture the breadth of what he thinks he will achieve. That\u2019s when he tells his audience he will get results \u201clike you\u2019ve never seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6591"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}