I think that Donald Trump is a bad man with some good ideas and some bad ideas.  He seems prone to stick with the bad ideas (and bad people, like Pete Hogwallop[1]) while rabbiting around on the good ideas.  He may well represent a threat to Democracy.  Or not.  His method, much more this term than in the first, is the bull-rush.  Doing “everything, everywhere, all at once.”  Testing, even blowing through, established limits of all sorts; moving very fast and keeping it up across time; forcing changes that may or may not endure.  He’s a wrecking ball and a disruptor, not a builder. 

            Trump also is not a “politician.”  In contemporary America, a “politician” is a career public employee who gets his/her/their contract renewed every 2, 4, or 6 years by playing it safe within the terms of their own constituency.  Most of them rise by following what the Romans used to call the “cursus honorum” (“course of honors/offices”).[2]  They’re committed to never doing anything “risky.”[3]  Trump thinks that these people are Nithings.[4]  He’s pretty much right about most of them.[5] 

            But what is the alternative to Trump?  Leave things the way they were?  Keep going along the same lines that produced gigantic deficits and a national debt that seems likely to end in default?  A creeping expansion of the Executive Branch and rule through regulation, executive orders, and executive agreements, rather than legislation?  A withering of the Legislative Branch through its own indifference to its responsibilities?  A well-advanced politicization of the Judicial Branch?  That’s going to end in the election of Supreme Court Justices.  An economy that prioritizes Finance over everything else, including Manufacturing?  A neglect of American military power in an era of rising danger?  A materialist, consumerist culture—against which Jimmy Carter warned long ago—that has reduced us to a “Country Made of Ice Cream”?  How is any of that going to be reformed in a timely fashion by continuing with “the way we do things around here”? 

[1] Start at 4:05.  Pa always said never trust a Hogwallop! 

[2] Cursus honorum – Wikipedia 

[3] The NYT is risk averse in its attitude toward change.  New York Times risky – Search

[4] Old English term.  See the first meaning given.  NITHING definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary 

[5] But not all of them.  Gina Raimondo for the Democrats and Mike Gallagher for the Republicans offer hope.