Trump as president: Enough power to match his ego
It started as a political joke.
Imagine, Donald Trump running for president. Any day now, we thought, he would be gone. Then, little by little, the laughter faded. Trump wasn’t in on the joke and took himself seriously. He thoroughly believed in his own greatness.
He said outrageous things that would have destroyed any other candidate: John McCain wasn’t a war hero because Trump “liked people who weren’t captured.” He publicly made fun of a handicapped reporter. He believed Mexicans were criminals and rapists. Then what should have been the coup de grace – did Trump sexually assault women? Had he finally gone too far? Well, yes, for about a week. Then the politicians in his own party who had reviled him for his treatment of women had second thoughts. If Ronald Reagan was “just being Reagan,” then Trump should get a pass “for just being Trump.”
How to deconstruct the man and his ego. One representative in Congress said Trump “wasn’t a serious adult.” How perfect that statement is. Trump is a man child – an enfant terrible.
Newborns and very young children are self-centered. They live in their own world. Selfishness is natural and all existence revolves around them. Then slowly they realize there are others who they must live with. Things change. Outward selfishness is now a negative trait. Self-indulgence is frowned upon. Self-interest doesn’t fade, but it must be well hidden. That’s the normal psychological progression from child to adult.
Like a child, we never know what the Donald will say or do next. He likes to be unpredictable. That may be good in a businessman, but in a president it could be disastrous. His pride would surely lead to a fall on the world stage. And what if he couldn’t find a phone booth to turn into Super Donald?
Like most conservatives, he has big ideas, but small, unrealistic solutions to them. First, he invokes the eternal god of tax cuts. Currently, income tax rates are from 10 percent to 39.6 percent. Trump says he is going to reduce them to 10 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent. But he’s going to keep most of the favorable deductions for the upper-income tax brackets, including the despised carried interest “get out of jail” free card.
Then with all the money he won’t have, he’s going to enhance Social Security and Medicare. We’ll watch with great interest while he performs this miracle. It’s simple math. Conservatives cut taxes and there’s less money to work with. Less money equals a need to cut programs. Then there’s a desperate call for “reforming” Social Security, Medicare and other programs because the country is “broke.” But we weren’t “broke” before the tax cuts. A few years later, we cut taxes again, so we have even less money for those programs, and on it goes until we reach the conservative paradise of extremely limited government with low taxes and no social or moral responsibilities.
He’s also going to decrease the corporate tax rate. The current U.S. corporate tax rate, as conservatives bellow every chance they get, is from 15 percent to 35 percent – the third highest in the world. But what we’re not told is that the tax structure has a plethora of deductions so that many corporations pay very little. A few pay no tax at all. We must also remember that corporate tax laws were written by corporate America through large contributions to political campaigns. That’s why our tax structure is so long and complicated. Our lax lobbying laws have much to answer for.
If the worst happens and Trump wins on Tuesday, leading Republicans probably believe they can contain any explosive blasts and that Mike Pence will really be the acting president. But an ego as large as Trump’s will explode with all the power of the presidency. For the first time, he would have more power than even his ego has ever known. The temptation to use it will be irresistible. Add to this his paranoia and the Republican containment operation could fail.
But the biggest noise Trump makes is the vainglorious belief that he alone can “Make America great again,” even while his racism and sexism have made America hate again.
Jay Fenton is a resident of Washington and a retired writer and film restorer for VCI/Magic Lantern Entertainment in Tulsa, Okla.