Trump's Campaign Succeeded by Breaking All the Rules, and Its Catching Up to Him Now

[babylonsister]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/the-campaign-comes-back-to-haunt-trump/533397/

Trump's Campaign Succeeded by Breaking All the Rules—and It’s Catching Up to Him Now
Recalling his victory over Hillary Clinton has been the president’s only solace for months, but his personnel and management decisions now threaten to topple his presidency.

David A. Graham Jul 12, 2017 Politics


Donald Trump’s campaign for president seemed to vacillate between, to borrow Hunter S. Thompson’s dichotomy, being too weird to live and too rare to die. All the smartest analysts were convinced that it was definitely too weird to live. Stocked with amateurs, retreads, and minor-league washouts suddenly promoted for a cup of coffee, and overseen by a candidate with a penchant for enormous gaffes. The Trump team was widely viewed as on the verge of collapse. The joke was on the wise analysts: The candidacy turned out to be too rare to die, and now Trump is president.

But with a few months’ extra perspective, and after several days of damaging revelations, it’s becoming clear that although Trump’s chaotic approach to the campaign did not prevent him from winning the White House, and may actually have provided him with a crucial edge, it is hobbling his presidency. The undisciplined, untutored atmosphere is on display in the meeting that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort had with a woman they believed to be a Russian government lawyer offering opposition research on behalf of the Kremlin, and there may be more damaging revelations to come.

Politico reported on a bleak atmosphere inside the administration Tuesday night: “One Trump adviser said the White House was ‘essentially helpless’ because the conduct happened during an ‘anything goes’ campaign that had few rules.”

snip//

The campaign scandals are not Trump’s only problems. He has hundreds of unfilled executive-branch jobs, most of them without nominees. His foreign policy has been chaotic at best, even setting aside problems that have bedeviled several of his predecessors, especially North Korea’s nuclear problem. On the home front, he has not notched a single major legislative win yet, and his executive orders have a miserable record in court. But it is the campaign scandals—and his firing of FBI Director James Comey, which he says was in response to the FBI’s Russia investigation, and which has raised questions of obstruction of justice—are the gravest threat to his presidency. The irony, of course, is that if the Trump campaign really did conspire with Russia to interfere in the election, and that swayed the result, then he also wouldn’t be president without that same motley assortment of staffers.

How truly different is the Trump administration from the Trump campaign on staffing? Certainly, there are more veteran hands at the White House than there were at Trump Tower. But the president has also seen multiple hires withdraw nominations or leave jobs without security clearances due to improper vetting. It’s an open question to what extent the same lack of discipline that dogged the campaign affects the White House.

[dalton99a]

1. He didn't run to govern

[unblock]

2. so much irony lately. they said hillary was the most polarizing candidate ever.

truth is, the only thing polarizing about hillary was the decades-long lie-filled hate campaign against her.
*she* is not polarizing, *she* has very inclusive rhetoric and only rarely (far more rarely than most politicians) makes any statements that could remotely be considered divisive. but of course the hate campaign against her picks those out and amplifies them ad nauseum....


but the irony is that they ran against her someone whose entire campaign was predicated on divisiveness. without divisiveness, benedict donald has nothing. he's the "shock jock" of politicians, everything he says is designed to be controversial.


who knew that pissing off constituency after constituency might eventually be bad for a politician....

[Roy Rolling]

3. Campaigns today

They are "all about me". How to sell candidates to people to assuage their anger. Management qualifications? What's that?!

[Baconator]

4. She wasn't everything the media proclaimed her to be...

... But as a candidate she was sub par.

[Cosmocat]

7. No she wasn't

She was at worst the second best candidate out of the 17 who ran for POTUS in 2016.

As a candidate she was light years better than the guy who won, who said and did 100 things that would have destroyed any other politicians career.

I would say Bernie was a better candidate.

You could make the case Cruz was as good as she was, Rubio had more of the superficial stuff, looks and smile, but was far too immature.

She was no worse than Gore or Kerry.

She was solid, not sub par.

[PinkTiger]

8. Oh, Pleeze!

Bernie didn't win it, though. She won the primaries.
Bernie wasn't a Democrat.
Sorry.

[Cosmocat]

5. "Divisive" is a staple of right wing framing

Their media and elected officials gin their zombies up to a maniacal frenzy over Bill, Hillary, BHO, so 1/3 of the country loses this shit over them, 1/3 of the country does not pay any attention to politics, just hears them screaming their heads off, and the media obediently babbles right wing posturing that they are "divisive."

And, this country is that fucking stupid on all things republican fuck wittery that is accepts that the victim is the wrong doer.

[maddiemom]

9. Amen!

[BumRushDaShow]

6. "Trump's Campaign Succeeded by Breaking All the Rules"

because his kind "make the rules" and his echo chamber in Congress supports bending or continuing to break any rule that was strictly enforced against our side... because they can.