Donald Trump wants to be President of the United States of America. Well, maybe he’s not all that crazy. After all, Ronald Reagan was once a former actor whose greatest role was playing the U.S. President for real. He was said to have slept through Cabinet meetings and insisted on having briefing notes of no longer than one page in length. Apparently, this was to accommodate his short span of attention by providing script-like documents. Bill Clinton was well known for failure to keep it in his pants during his entire political career. George W. Bush invented new words or mispronounced actual words, thus becoming the butt of numerous comedians’ jokes. President Bush was given 9/11 as his legacy, and messed it up by invading Iraq under false pretences. Barak Obama became the first African-American President, although many Americans including African-Americans, didn’t think of him as really being black.
So why couldn’t Donald Trump become President? Trump leads all other Republican candidates in the polls at this time. He shoots from the hip, much like Reagan and Bush. His mouth often outruns his brains, not unlike former Presidents. Yet, he has come to represent a significant part of the American electorate that is angry with the state of their politics, the economy and society in general. He represents that portion of the population where the American dream has become a nightmare. He talks about issues like immigration which other candidates have tended to avoid by employing the usual cautious platitudes. He doesn’t rely on carefully-worded positions developed through focus-groups and well paid politically-savvy advisors.
Many Americans, like many Canadians, are frustrated with the current political scene. They feel that the powers that be in Washington and Ottawa do not reflect their real interests. In all truth, can you blame them? When you struggle everyday to make ends meet and good paying jobs are becoming fewer and fewer, you tend to target those fat cats in government and in the corporate world. However, despite Trump himself being a fat cat, he seems to speak for this disgruntled portion of the population. You may not like the things he says or how he says them, but you have to admit that his straight talk is somewhat catchy and to the point. If anything, he once again has become a media darling, which may in the end be his downfall.
FROLITICKS 