Trump’s obvious appeal is that he’s a winner. That he gets things done. This is his trump card: That people who may not have the time or interest to study the nuances of foreign policy won’t have to. A side benefit is that we can quit worrying about things. That’s because Trump knows how to handle the Chinese/Mexicans/Iranians. (This formula doesn’t just work for foreign policy, of course, the “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” line is all-purpose.)

This is a mentality which says, when all else fails, just hire someone who knows how to win. It happens all the time in sports; it’s the reason the Redskins hired two-time Super Bowl champion head coach Mike Shanahan. It’s the reason candidates today pay a lot of money to get advice from Ed Rollins — who managed Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984.

There is a sense that they know some secret — and that if you hire them, things will magically happen for you. It’s far easier to just hire someone with a (perceived) track record of getting things done — and just outsource your cares to him — than it is to sweat the details.