A Path to Presidential Success- the Master Cabinetry of Donald Trump

A Path to Presidential Success- the Master Cabinetry of Donald Trump

One look into the comings and goings at the New York’s Trump Tower, since its namesake was elected president, and one could easily conclude that the president-elect is willing to meet with anyone and everyone, friend or foe.

Mitt Romney, Bill de Blasio, Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore…these are not what anyone would call Trump supporters…and yet, “the Donald” was willing to sit down with each of them at length, ask probing questions and have substantive discussions with each of these erstwhile political foes. While sending the mainstream media into an absolute “tizzy,” and thus prompting fallacious stories about how Mr. Trump is supposedly turning his back on the base of supporters who elected him president, once again it is Donald Trump who is plodding along and, as before, is enabling this same mainstream media to make themselves look foolish, at the end of the day.

What the media does not understand about Trump is that he is not a politician, but rather a business executive- one who is willing to listen to even his fiercest competitor in order to gain a competitive edge and understand all viewpoints prior to making the best decision.

Take for instance his meetings with Messrs. DiCaprio and Gore. Staunch environmentalists both- environmentalists in the extreme sense of the word, to boot. Both of these men reported having substantive, probing and thoughtful discussions with the president elect. Yet, when it came to announcing his choice for heading the Environmental Protection Agency, it was Donald Trump who named the Attorney General of Oklahoma, one Scott Pruitt, a noted skeptic of man-made climate change- the antithesis of whom either DiCaprio or Gore would have preferred.

While the mainstream media and all of the political pundits are busy musing as to the method behind his madness, Donald Trump knows all-too-well that the best way to defeat the opposition is to step into their shoes, see the world the way they see it, and arrive upon the best way to succeed in overcoming this opposition…

…in a word, brilliant.

One look into the choices President-elect Trump has made in his final selections to fill these posts, and one sees the makings of a cabinet that might well be the best presidential cabinet crafted in the last several decades. The fact that Mr. Trump is willing to seek personnel well outside the politicos in Washington, and even consider the appointment of onetime rivals and outright opponents to his own candidacy, shows that he is a man who is sage enough to look past the squabbles of campaign rhetoric in order to find the best men and women to fit the positions he needs to fill. Much to the chagrin of the “NeverTrump” so-called conservatives within his own Republican party, the choices he has made thus far have been, in a word, conservative, to a degree that Ronald Reagan’s cabinet never was.

Compare this to that of his immediate predecessor. Barack Obama would no sooner sit down with his opponents, and hear them out, than he would get into a four-point stance against the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive line. In fact, it is doubtful that the sitting U.S. president listens much to his own cabinet (Valerie Jarrett, excepted), as even the legislators in his own party have repeatedly complained about the fact that he rarely consults them before making any decision.  As he closes out the second of his two terms as president, Obama is still convinced that he is smarter than everyone in the room, smarter than everyone in Washington D.C. or, for that matter, everyone in the entire world. Just as his party’s candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, is unwilling to accept any responsibility for her own defeat at the polls, Barack Obama is quick to blame anyone and everyone else, including his own immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, for the shortcomings of his own presidency- a presidency which historians will note to be an abject failure, when all is said and done. The reasons for this are many, but suffice to say that President Barack Obama ultimately failed, due to the excess of his own ego in thinking it was he who knew better than anyone else. That’s fine for a university professor who holds the power of his students’ grades in his hands, but disastrous for a president who seeks to lead a nation and, namely, the world in which we live.

Donald Trump will succeed the way he has always succeeded, by listening and probing and negotiating and dealing. He will succeed by hard work, as evidenced by his career and his candidacy, and by his own determination to succeed in the face of opposition, just as he succeeded in winning the nomination of his party and, in the end, the presidency, itself.

And, for the record, he is off to one helluva start.

 

-Drew Nickell, 9 December 2016

© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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