The view from Donald Trump’s vast penthouse in the New York tower that bears his surname must be awe-inspiring. Every morning he gets to gaze out at the sweeping sea of glass, steel and concrete that is Manhattan, insulated in his gilded island far above the crowded, traffic-choked streets below. This has been his city, his home, seat of his fame and fortune. It has made him, unmade him, and been every bit as much a part of his DNA as he is interwoven in its cultural and business fabric.
Yet, for all the years of his celebrity, though the fame of his deals, the flamboyance of his lifestyle, the infamy of his failed marriages and the countless publicity stunts calculated at wily self-promotion, Trump the person has remained an enigma. He seems to have erupted into the public consciousness fully-formed, forever wearing that waxy-orange tan, longish hair, boxy dark suits, white shirts and red (occasionally blue) ties. The years have streaked the hair with grey and the clothes hang more loosely around a thicker waistline, but for all his continued presence in the public eye this consummate showman and carnival barker is still a great unknown.
Conventional wisdom dictates that the true Donald Trump cannot remain enigmatic for much longer. His election as the 45th President of the United States has propelled him to a level of notoriety and fame the likes of which he has never known, and will subject all of his actions to unprecedented scrutiny. True power has a way of stripping away all artifice to reveal the depths beneath a President’s crafted image. Yet, while this has been the case for all his predecessors, Trump is going to pose a challenge as he is purposefully opaque.
His victory speech was gracious, delivered with the appropriate solemnity to match the occasion. He reached out to those who had not voted for him, asking for their assistance and guidance. He even managed kind words for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, praising her for a lifetime of service. Subsequent visits to Congress and with President Barack Obama has revealed a Trump that has dared to show humility in body language, control in his pronouncements, and sobriety in his public statements. In calling Obama “a good man”, commenting on keeping parts of the Affordable Care Act (he would retain the guarantee for insurance for preexisting conditions and the ability to keep kids on the family plan to age 26 -- all advantageous to his lower-income core constituents); being open to at least a portion of the vaunted border wall being constructed as a much cheaper fence; and his admonishments towards supporters who have threatened violence against minorities. Trump is revealing a more pragmatic side than his vitriol-spouting campaign alter-ego. Governance is not campaigning – when he acted like a petulant adolescent he may have whipped up greater support among his core constituencies but towards the final weeks, when he began acting like a responsible adult, that he began to catch up on, and outpace Clinton.
This is not entirely surprising., for throughout his career Trump has displayed key characteristics of entrepreneurs (i.e. the ability to assess risk at a glance and take corrective action; being able to process opposing viewpoints and find alternatives, even common ground, in order to make a deal happen) and CEOs, for whom pragmatism is vital. It appears that many of Trump’s pronouncements and verbalized policies are, in fact, opening negotiating positions – however extreme sounding -- and that he is willing to meet somewhere, if not necessarily in the middle,. Everything else – the bluster, the defensive counterattacks, the out-sized displays of aggression and male dominance, are for public consumption – defensive scaffolding under which the true self hides.
Trump is probably the most instinctual presidential candidate we have seen in recent American history. He was able to understand the needs and feelings of the Republican base without needing the usual suspects of pollsters and political consultants. In an America obsessed with political insincerity – and by extension all the conventional elites – Trump became the last authentic man, railing against everything: how the economy was rigged against the common man; how the governing elites wouldn’t do anything about too many foreigners, or the illegals, or the terrorists hiding under your bed, trying to steal your jobs or blow you to smithereens. He built a reputation for being unafraid to say what he believed, however occasionally vague, incoherent, or scary it sounded.
He stripped down the GOP message to it's essential core and jettisoned much of what the base (and many independents) had neither liked nor understood (and what they understood less they liked less): global free trade; social security and Medicare inefficiencies; grand, overambitious nation-building delusions in the Middle East and Central Asia instead of focusing resources on making the homeland truly secure and proactively taking out the terrorists anywhere in the world. Trump, either prowling his penthouse high above the teeming streets or the early morning darkness at his palatial house in Florida with just his Twitter account like some modernistic King Lear raging at the storm – knew more about the Republican Party, and the state of the United States, then anyone else did.
The Democrats helped, of course, by nominating someone who proved easy to run against in electoral toxicity. Hillary Clinton was arguably one of the most carefully-scripted, over-polling, loaded with consultants, big-money candidates in recent American history. She was disciplined but uninspired in straying from the tight confines of the orthodox box in which she placed herself. She had no sweeping vision, no single, soaring line of memorable poetic inspiration or pithy catchphrase. What she did have was experience, meticulous preparation, and the ‘right’ focus for her establishment, elite backers. Not for her an open, vocal dialogue on issues such as economic disruption, climate change, the fragmenting of the middle class, the shattering of many working-class Iives caused by an ill-defined rush toward globalization and an even murkier game plan of what the resultant ‘new economy’ would look like. All of this embodied what a substantial chunk of America has come to resent most about the various elites.
The shock of election night is slowly wearing off as the world slowly adjusts to the reality of a Donald Trump victory. After an initial plunge in the futures market, the Dow Jones spearheaded a surge that wiped out the losses (and then some). The steady chatter from international capitols has receded into the background as world leaders fell over each other in offering sycophantic congratulations to the presumptive leader of the free world.
Almost immediately, pundits, talking heads, academics began filling the air waves, blogosphere, and realms of paper, attempting to rationalize how everyone got it so wrong. The hypocrisy, self-justification and barely- veiled condescension towards Trump was as intense as the noonday Kuala Lumpur sun. Phrases like, “What Trump must do now…,” “He has to…,” or “He must..” all imply that the President-elect needs to listen to these pretentious mavens of the elite, who having failed to recognize his potential for victory, now seek to recover some of their lost credibility by sounding as if they know what actions he needs to take. It's all too easy to say; way harder to do. Advice has never been in short supply.
But why should he listen to these voices? They were wrong about him, and the movement he symbolized (not unleashed – an important distinction). Trump will do what Trump wants to do. Plain and simple.
More worrisome was that the election became an orgy of anti-Americanism, virtually unprecedented for the power of its almost irrational vitriol. To many outside the United States any nation that could elect such a venal man, is plainly made up of rednecks, racists and reprobates. The ‘post-racial’ Barack Obama has been merely a blip, this argument goes, and the US has once again defaulted to the swaggering, unilateralist bigotry of past historical precedent. This narrative especially suits China as it waits like a vulture to pick from the remains of the slowly gasping Trans-Pacific Partnership; others like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines - himself often portrayed as oafish, even thuggish - think it easier now to pursue their agenda of breaking away from US hegemony; Malaysia’s Najib Razak, embroiled in the seemingly never-ending 1MBD scandal and bereft of western allies, is seeking to tilt to the Middle Kingdom in the belief that China’s money will help keep him in power. All are betting on a bullying, inward-looking America.
It may not be that simple.
There are emerging clues as to what kind of President Trump will be – instructive views on both his personality and pragmatism. That the United States will take a sharp, rightist turn is indubitable. It is unlikely to be a Reaganesque “Shining City On a Hill” with low taxes, minimal regulation and free markets. Yet neither will it yield a demagogic, rabble-rousing, xenophobic, trade war-happy nation of the “My Way or the Highway” mentality. What seems in store for America is a nationalist, populist, law-and-order-focused regime which will teeter on the edge of protectionism, focused more on bilateral trade agreements than the kind of sweeping, grandiose (and maybe even over-idealistic) supra-regional partnerships with their wildly uneven results.
Trump’s early appointments – Jeff Sessions as Attorney-General, Mike Pompeo heading the CIA and Mike Flynn for National Security Advisor – reinforce the above view. Notwithstanding progressive (or liberal) protestations, Sessions is a highly-accomplished lawyer, Flynn well-versed in defense matters, and Kansas congressman Pompeo an Army vet and Harvard Law grad, who will bring an analytical and operational focus to the U.S. counterterrorism effort. All are competent for their roles. Trump values loyalty, and all three men have, to one extent or another, proven themselves as lonely voices who rallied to his side.
If Trump then surprises by offering frequent critic (and former Republican nominee) Mitt Romney the position of Secretary of State, followed by similar concessions to the ‘establishment’ Republicans who spurned him during the campaign, he will then demonstrate pragmatism to an unexpected degree. It will also underline his determination to bring together his insurgents with the Washington elite like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell who, after retaining Congress due to Trump’s surprising coattails, are eager to prove that the disparate tendencies in the GOP can be effectively synergized.
Having captured the very government he has so vociferously railed against, Trump must now govern, if not with their support, then their tacit compliance. He can be focused and disciplined: late addition Kellyanne Conway confined herself to help Trump keep hitting his marks and hammering home the same relentless cadences that constituted his message. While it's highly likely the President-elect will stray off course with some degree of frequency, New White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, has proven himself adept at doing this as well.
Trump, one view holds, is likely to become a CEO President, setting the broad outlines of grand strategy while day-to-day governance will fall to an alliance between Vice-President-elect Mike Pence and Congress. Clearly neither ideologue nor idealist, Trump will focus on what works, bringing conservatism to every article of domestic policy, starting with the dismantling of Obamacare, the appointment of pro-business (and oil drilling) secretaries of the Interior and Health and Human Services, easing exports of natural gas, and the withdrawal from climate-change treaties signed by his predecessor. Sweeping tax cuts, corporate tax rate reductions, tax repatriation provisions and rapid deregulation are all likely to follow.
These are all not radical or scary ideas, and if Trump implements all of them in some form, there is the chance his will be a substantative presidency. These are early days yet, and it may well be that the doomsayers could be proven right, but nothing right now suggests an apocalyptic four years.
As Donald Trump's presidency unfolds – let’s not kid ourselves, with the transition process, it has already begun – it is increasingly becoming clear that the man’s personality may be whatever his persona of the moment requires him to be. He has been an entertainer, an entrepeneur, a TV star, a CEO, and a candidate. He must now be a President, and that role, which will be the entire focus of his personality, will be shaped by the persona he adopts. It is hard to believe that a man who has spent his entire existence defining success by "winning," will want to blow it all now.