COLUMN: You Don’t Know Trump As Well As You Think:
Many commentators are convinced they know the real Donald Trump. He is, they think, so obviously shallow, insecure and garish that single descriptive words or phrases are all that is needed.
He is, take your pick: “the Last of the Great Vaudevillians,” the “king of bad taste in a country that loves bad taste,” a “comic-opera demagogue.” Or, more seriously, a “con artist,” “a fascist,” “the latest in a long line of demagogues,” or a “bullying thug.”
Most of these characterizations are little more than name-calling masquerading as analysis. . . .
Business conducted at his level of play requires ambition, risk-taking, resilience, and the capacity to fight back — just like national politics. Trump’s broadsides are a signal that if attacked, he will not go quietly into the night. And his outlandish policy perceptions like the mass deportation of illegal aliens and a possible trade war with China are best seen as reflecting the direction of his thinking– opening bids as it were, not deeply held and entrenched policy positions.
Empathy for the left out, ignored little guy? Trump has built his campaign on it. Ordinary Americans are looking for a fighter, someone who considers “cares about people like me” to mean that a candidate will fight for them. His reflects a much keener diagnosis of the public he hopes to lead than Jeb Bush’s idea of campaigning as a “joyful tortoise.”
Critics have conflated the by-products of Trump’s branding strategy with his character. He engineered a successful repositioning of his highly leveraged building empire to one increasingly built on his brand name. Big, bold, brash and successful are its sales themes.
Is there an element of hype in the pitch? Of course there is, and it carries over to his “Make America Great Again” theme. Yet note that the object of his ambitions is not himself, the mark of a true narcissist, but his country. And note too the word “again” that speaks to restoration and reform.”
I keep hearing this kind of thing from people who actually know Trump.