What will Donald Trumps campaign shakeup tell us?
Usually, you have to wait until a person becomes president to see if they can fulfill the promise of their presidency. But Donald Trump is offering us a sneak preview. He has promised unrivaled success as president, even though he has no political experience. His campaign tests this proposition. Trump had no experience as a campaigner either, yet he beat 16 rivals soundly, causing some of them to embarrass themselves, perhaps irrevocably. The general election, though, has posed a stiffer challenge. His recent campaign shakeup-- the second top-level shift since becoming the likely GOP nominee-- is either a sign of adaptation by an entrepreneurial new thinking executive who has come back from bankruptcies in his career, or its an act of desperation and self-soothing that comes before defeat.
Campaign changes at the top dont necessarily tell us anything about a candidates chances on their own. John Kerry switched campaign managers and lost. Ronald Reagan did the same and won. Well know which is the case with Trump soon enough. In the interim, however, the campaign change does offer evidence about the promise Trump has made to voters. The real estate tycoon has pledged an extraordinary level of effectiveness as president. He will transform the military, shrink the federal budget, achieve record economic growth, revamp the tax code, bring back manufacturing jobs, quickly dispatch ISIS, force the Chinese to heel, keep American businesses from moving operations overseas and be a first-class cheerleader for the United States. He has said there will be so much winning that we will grow tired of winning.
This is hyperbole, of course, but still, the essential promise of the Trump campaign is that he is a world beater once he sets his successful mind to a task. That he lacks experience is not a problem. Its an asset.
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By the Donald Trump standard of success, he is arguably farther behind in the general election than his polls indicate. Hes down nationally by an average of six points and hes down in the key swing states. By all accounts, his organization is well behind where it needs to be with early voting starting in a little over a month. Its not that Donald Trump cant come back. Its that he has promised unrivaled success in all that he touches. By that measure he is not winning.
Yes, say his supporters, but think of all the things blocking him: the awful press, the fact hes never done this before, staffers who dont sync with him, and turncoat establishment Republicans.
Lets assume all of these things are hampering Trump and are not excuses for a flawed campaign. Even so, they are the normal obstacles to campaigning. None of them are a surprise. They could not be a surprise to a candidate making the claims to success Trump has made. That he is inexperienced at this pursuit is not an excuse available to him. His lack of experience is supposed to be an assetthe key to even greater success than the insiders.
The hurdles Trump is facing now roughly approximate the hurdles hell face as president. Except that the presidency will be harder. The job will be just as unfamiliar as his current pursuit, just as random and far more constraining. Campaigning is the easy part. As a candidate Donald Trump can run his campaign like a business. As president hell be hemmed in by the office, the separation of powers, custom and the overwhelming tonnage of duties that come with the job. Every president leaves office lamenting that the job was more confining than they imagined.
Trumps new campaign team has been picked to help him break out of the minimal constraints hes embraced as a general election candidate. I am what I am, Trump has taken to saying. It was a change that he foreshadowed in his interview with Time last week. I am listening to so-called experts to ease up the rhetoric, and so far, Im liking the way I ran in the primaries better, he said.
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Donald Trump announced a major campaign shake-up in which he hired a new CEO and promoted a senior manager. Roll Call columnist Jon Allen joins C...
For several months, the Trump team has suggested that there would be a modification to the candidate who ran in the primaries. Paul Manafort made that his first promise to nervous donors. Dr. Ben Carson said there were two Donald Trumps, and voters would just have to be exposed to the one he had seen behind-the-scenes. In early July, Sen. Bob Corker said without a pivot the campaign would die in three weeks. Sen. Marco Rubio said on Face the Nation that the pivot would wipe away his fears that Trump shouldnt be trusted with the nuclear codes. Mike Pence has been telling Republicans like Senator Jeff Flake that they should support Trump because in private he is a different man.
Donald Trump has banished all this talk. There is one Donald Trump, the guy who won the primaries. Please get out of his way now and let him win the general election. (Or, if hes going to lose, hes going to do it having been true to himself).
Donald Trump is going to be more Donald Trump than ever. It does not seem like the challenges he has faced in the last three weeks have come from a lack of assertion of his personality, but the choice he has made mirrors a decision every president must make every day. Every president faces a balance between his instincts and the bracing frankness of outside advice-- if hes lucky enough to have people around him who give him that advice. Because the presidency encourages sycophancy and group-think, those who have served presidents warn that every chief magistrate needs a person who can tell them no and who can help them fight against their instincts when their instincts are going to vault them into the abyss. But presidents also need to know themselves well enough to trust their instincts, because in the final moment they are alone with world-changing decisions.
Campaign shakeups are either a sign of desperation or adaptation. If Donald Trump can right his campaign, hell not only have helped his poll position, but hell have proved a central claim of his campaign: that his skills honed in the business world can be transferred to complicated unfamiliar tasks. If hes made the wrong choice, he will undermine his campaign and the case for it -- which means hes unlikely to get a chance to test the theory of his campaign in practice in the Oval Office.
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What will Donald Trumps campaign shakeup tell us?
- Trump May Owe $100 Million From Double-Dip Tax Breaks, Audit Shows - The New York Times - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
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- Translating Trump's talking points as he ratchets up rhetoric on campaign trail - NPR - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
- Trump Campaign Hid Settlements With Women, New Complaint Says - The Daily Beast - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
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- Trump Has Long Been Known as a Micromanager. Prosecutors Are Using It Against Him. - The New York Times - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
- Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels face off on tense day in court - BBC.com - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
- Trump trial in 60 seconds day 15 - MSNBC - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
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- Judge Merchan Cracks Down on Michael Cohens Taunting of Trump in Hush-Money Case - The New York Times - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
- Biden will keep Trump's China tariffs, and add new ones on electric vehicles - NPR - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
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- Will Donald Trump Take the Stand at His Trial? - New York Magazine - May 11th, 2024 [May 11th, 2024]
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- Opinion | What Worries Me Most About a Trump Presidency - The New York Times - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
- Joe Biden is now beating Donald Trump in the majority of polls - Newsweek - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
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- Sebastian Stan Transforms Into Young Donald Trump in The Apprentice First Look - Variety - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
- Donald Trump could face prison time if he is convicted in upcoming NY hush money trial - USA TODAY - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's Stock Has Lost More Than Half Its Value Since Going Public - Newsweek - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
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- Johnson to Join Trump at Mar-a-Lago for 'Election Integrity' Announcement - The New York Times - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
- Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump, and the start of the hush money trial podcast - The Guardian - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
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- Why Biden Raising More Money Than Trump for the 2024 Election Matters - The New York Times - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
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- Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at Cannes - The Guardian - April 11th, 2024 [April 11th, 2024]
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- READ: The Bombshell Verdict Ordering Trump to Pay $364 Million - The Daily Beast - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
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- Donald Trump ordered to pay $355M, barred from NY business in civil fraud case - New York Post - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Donald Trump civil fraud ruling: The $355 million fine and business restrictions could end the Trump organization as ... - Slate - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Highlights From a Key Hearing in Trump's Manhattan Criminal Case - The New York Times - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Read the full ruling from Judge Engoron in Trump's civil fraud trial - The Washington Post - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- Eric, Donald Trump Jr. face weaker penalties in fraud trial verdict - Business Insider - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
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