As they did with Lee Iacocca in the ’80s and then with H. Ross Perot—who might well have become president in 1992 if he hadn’t appeared to be a lunatic—Americans long for a straight-talking businessman who can save the country from the political class that fouled everything up. The recent budget battle is only the latest sign of the cluelessness of Washington culture. Only in the nation’s capital could a group of people bicker for weeks over reducing the federal budget by either 1 percent or 2 percent, agree to do nothing about entitlement programs that will soon bankrupt us, and then get hailed by each other and by much of the media—from MSNBC to Fox—as courageous budget cutters. Trump appears to offer something more than yawn-inducing grandstanding to a fed-up populace…
To oil-rich Arab potentates, Trump sends a message that Obama would never utter, and in a tone that Obama can apparently never manage. (Even the nuance-loving president’s condemnation of Muammar Gaddafi was delivered with Obama’s customary slightly-above-room-temperature cadence.) Nuance is not a problem for Trump. “OPEC will cut the price of oil, and if they don’t they’ve got problems,” he says. “We are protecting Saudi Arabia free of charge. The Arab League asked us to go into Libya and we go in and we don’t say, ‘Are you going to pay for it?’ ”
None of this is diplomatic, much of it is likely impractical, but there is not a single thing in the above pronouncements that most Republicans, and many Americans, wouldn’t agree with. And Trump makes his case with rare relish. On the campaign trail, he would blithely make a gaffe a day and not give a damn. In the last few weeks, he’s insulted Palin supporters by discounting her chances and told a well-regarded New York Times columnist that she was, basically, a talentless hack with “the face of a dog.” Just wait till Ivana and Marla start talking.
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