From Doug French at mises.ca:
Donald Trump says America’s problems are managerial. The political class is “stupid,” and “horrible negotiators.” He can fix the country’s problems instantaneously with his own entrepreneurial ability and by drafting into government service the likes of multi-billionaire Carl Icahn. Trump claims he said over dinner recently, “Carl, if I get this thing, I want to put you in charge of China and Japan, can you handle both of them? Okay? China and Japan,”
We’re to imagine Icahn telling his Washington secretary, “Get me China on the phone!” As Jeffrey Tucker explains, Trump sees the country as a single company competing against the companies of China and Japan Inc.. Tucker writes,
In effect, he believes that he is running to be the CEO of the country — not just of the government (as Ross Perot once believed) but of the entire country. In this capacity, he believes that he will make deals with other countries that cause the U.S. to come out on top, whatever that could mean. He conjures up visions of himself or one of his associates sitting across the table from some Indian or Chinese leader and making wild demands that they will buy such and such amount of product else “we” won’t buy their product.
Republican voters love it. He’s a breath of fresh, simple, political air. Maybe you’re a smartypants who thinks Trump’s tirades border on moronic. That’s because his answers scored at the 4th-grade reading level during the August 6th debate when the text of his answers was run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test. Most adults wouldn’t pride themselves on speaking at that level, but, a certain financial newsletter operation I know wants their writers to produce Trump-level copy. So, there must be a market Trumpspeak.
“The role Trumpspeak has played in Trump’s surging polls suggests that perhaps too many politicians talk over the public’s head when more should be talking beneath it in the hope of winning elections,” Jack Shafer concludes in his Politico piece.
So if short, blocky words, combined into short, blocky sentences and in turn short, blocky paragraphs works wondrously with the voters, how about the federal bureaucracy The Donald would have to manage? Not that he really wants to manage the leviathan. Donny Deutsch was probably right when he told a Morning Joe audience that Donald is a real estate developer with ADD, always looking to move on to the next deal.
Has he considered that the federal government has two million employees, most of whom he can’t fire? And that’s not the half of it. “Post-1960 Federal America has become a grotesque Leviathan by proxy, in which an expanding mass of state and local government workers, for-profit contractors, and nonprofit grant recipients administers a vast portion of federal money and responsibilities,” writes John J.DiIulio Jr. for the Washington Post.
If Republican voters think a Trump presidency will be four to eight years of “The Apprentice” on steroids, with Trump telling those who disobey or slack off “You’re fired,” they are as delusional as their hero, who, as Nick Gillespie says, has a tenuous grasp on reality.
To continue reading: Trump: The Art Of The Bureaucrat
