October 29,2017
Citation Scheme: Chicago, as referenced in The Little Seagull Handbook
Donald Trump is not someone that typically comes to mind when the word “presidential” is thrown around. Bombastic, erratic, egotistical, controlling and deceiving would better describe his personality than presidential. Through his first one hundred days however, he has been able to stick more to his script than he did on the campaign trail. The New York businessman has been able to tidy up his rhetoric through teleprompters, with only the occasional twitter storm. But it isn’t rhetoric that makes one presidential. It isn’t even their personality. It is how one leads that makes them presidential. No two presidents are the same, and each “will enter the White House with variable personal, political, and policy advantages.” We must remember that anyone, according to the Constitution of the United States, who is thirty-five years of age and a natural-born citizen is legally presidential material , and by that standard Donald Trump fits the bill, as does anyone who meets those requirements. This makes it very hard to conclude what exactly is “presidential material.” Many presidents have good, clear goals: Franklin D. Roosevelt had the best interests of the American citizen at heart during the darkest part of the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy wanted to bring the United States to the moon before the 1960s came to a close. Ronald Reagan wanted to lower the cost of living for the American taxpayer. Bill Clinton presided over the largest comeback of the US economy, and oversaw a balanced budget and eventual surplus. George W. Bush led the country through its most violent attack on our own soil in recent history. Barack Obama envisioned affordable healthcare for all. Donald Trump rose to prominence not through successful tenures in public offices, but on the appearance of success of his business at a time when many Americans feel that their government is disconnected from them. However, his leadership skills in the business world do not translate well into the political world. What is considered successful in the business world, specifically for Trump, does not mean success in the political world. This is what is leading to turbulent times in the Trump administration, and he is losing credibility for being “presidential material”.
In order to characterize Donald Trump as being an effective leader, how a president rises to prominence should be taken into consideration. Louis M. Hacker believes there can be a number of backgrounds from which a president can come. “Sometimes he starts out by being a person who already has manifested outstanding capacities for leadership in other public offices…Sometimes he rises to the occasion – when times are out of joint; when crisis threatens the nation – and boldly puts himself in the forefront of events.” There have been a number of recent presidents that fit this bill perfectly: Barack Obama rose to prominence amid the beginning of the 2008 financial collapse. George W. Bush was governor of Texas with the name recognition of his father, and Bill Clinton was a popular governor in Arkansas. Trump rose to prominence not through a successful tenure in a public office, or even as a successful businessman. He rose to prominence because times seem to be “out of joint.” Because Hacker believes that those are really the only two ways a president can rise to prominence, “disjointed” would be the best way to describe why Trump got the support that he did. For too long, voters of a certain demographic in middle America felt that the people running the country were overlooking them. They were angry, and Trump successfully rode that wave of anger from the electorate into the Oval Office. Not only did they felt disjointed from government, but they felt that the government was disjointed from them; that it no longer represented the people of middle America: the people who supported Trump all the way.
The anger that swept this specific electorate began to take its true form in June 2015. The President-to-be descended a gold-plated escalator to the lobby of his skyscraper and delivered the news that he would seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. He presented a slew of campaign promises that appealed to many as something the country desperately needed. Among many, many eyebrow-raising statements, Donald Trump promised Americans better immigration control by building a “big and beautiful wall” on our southern border, a complete overhaul of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Obamacare), and tax reform. To these voters, Trump could take his experience in running his company and hopefully run the government like his business, with all the success that came with it.
It is much harder to succeed in the White House than it is to succeed in business. There are many differences in how the White House is set up versus how a corporation is set up. First, the White House is a public-sector entity, subject to bureaucracy, red tape, and much stricter regulations than what would face a corporation. Second, the White House Office is the largest employer in the executive branch, meaning a massive team effort is needed to manage each department within the office effectively. This makes a president unable to directly manage each department, and they must trust those in leadership positions, specifically the heads of departments; the cabinet, to do the job right. Third, the president is subject to the executive office of the president and the office of management and budget. These two offices seek to help the president make decisions on policy and how to best lead the cabinet and influence the legislative branch. Especially in the context of Donald Trump, it is important to remember that we have a three-part government that “checks and balances” itself out. No one branch is more powerful than the other. “The president is not the presidency. The presidency is not the government. Ours is not a presidential system.” This means that the president is not the center of the government, let alone the center of attention. Even with all the attention that Trump takes up, he is not the center of it all. He is used to being in the center with his business, but he cannot do that in the Oval Office. Trump will find it difficult to adapt to running the White House as opposed to running his business, but as each president does, they will find their stride in leading the White House. With Donald Trump, he must overcome the unique corporate leadership style he has developed over the past three decades and learn new management skills in order to become an effective leader.
Mr. Trump certainly has a very unique way of leading a business. Because the Trump Organization is not publicly traded, the company has very few executive officeholders, no shareholders, and a small corporate staff of about one hundred and fifty people. This setup is extremely different not only from other corporations but from the massive number of staff in the White House. The Trump Organization is run like a “family business”, and is a family business by every stretch of the word. Three of his children run daily operations, while still getting the seal of approval from their father. The company that is run by the president’s family “…operates less on standardized procedures and more on a culture of Trump.” The White House is the exact opposite. As stated above, the president is not the presidency. This “culture of Trump” cannot exist for him to be an effective White House leader. The culture continues into the organization’s executive board. Top executives in the Trump Organization have been loyal to Trump for decades. He is used to having a small number of people around him that are loyal and will do anything to defend their CEO. According to th
e New York Times, when asked about Trump “…one former executive described it, the company is the ‘hub of a wheel, and he’s in the middle.’” The company is very focused on Trump, which allows him to manage almost everything about it, even as simple as personally signing paychecks for his employees. There is no way that President Trump could sign everyone’s paycheck in the White House.
There is one experience in particular that Trump has that he finds is his true selling point. He is a master in deal-making. Trump’s obsession with cutting deals originates back to when he first took over his father’s real estate company. Trump ran the business to make a profit, and for Donald that meant making numerous deals that would allow him to win even if the project he was involved in flopped. This is unsurprisingly a necessary skill in order to be President of the United States. The President “…must have money and can get it only when Congress appropriates it.” This, found in The Presidency in Perspective, means that the President must be able to squeeze as much out of Congress as they can in order to get anything done. In this instance, Corwin is talking about getting money from Congress. Trump can get as much money out of a real estate deal, and who is to say he can’t do the same with Congress? This also applies to anything the President does to get agenda policies through Congress. But there is a difference in how a real estate mogul benefits from a deal and how a President benefits from Congress. In his business dealings, Trump was able to say “no” to offers that he didn’t like, until he got what he wanted. Theoretically, he could do that with Congress but it is unlikely to work. Congress has their own agenda and they do what they want to do. A perfect example of this is the veto override. Donald Trump would veto a bill and because Congress does what they want, the veto would simply be overwritten and would become law. Brad Lockerbie, Stephen Borrelli, and Scott Hedger from the University of Utah conducted a study titled An Integrative Approach to Modeling Presidential Success in Congress. In it, they found that if the president takes a “yea” position on a role call vote, the motion is more likely to pass. If he wants to succeed, Trump should start saying “yes” more, considering he really likes his name being associated with “good”. They go on: “We are not concerned at this point about whether presidents “strategically” take “yea” positions in order to hop on a moving bandwagon and make themselves look more successful…the more frequently the president takes a position that is at a structural advantage…the more successful he will be.” In addition to this, presidents tend to be on the supporting side of a bill when their party is in control of congress. Donald Trump has a very unique opportunity at the moment: his party is in control of both houses of Congress, has a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and has control in the White House. President Obama had a similar situation when he was first elected in 2008. The democrats controlled both houses of Congress and got healthcare reform passed. Obama got what he wanted out of Congress, and Trump should be able to as well.
Aside from being able to get what he wants out of people, Trump also has managed a rather large corporation with holdings across the world, not that un-similar from leading a country with interests all over the world. The difference between the two is drawn at how the leader in each position manages their team. With the Trump Organization, Donald Trump is number one and no one else can be number one. He has appointed his children to the company’s corporate governance, which makes it hard for them to get fired, or for them to recommend something different to their father and CEO. Trump cannot do this in the White House. He must be able to deal with a cabinet of fifteen people that are all fighting for attention. It is quite a far cry from the boardroom in Trump Tower. Trump has made a fortunate living for himself, and made millions on deals without the help of investors. As stated in Kranish’s book, Trump Revealed, Trump wanted to do everything himself. “everything we do here is under my thumb…I do everything myself.” Trump, in his many business dealings was really the sole man behind the operation despite what Trump’s personal spokesman John Miller might tell us. For better or worse, this particular set of management skills does not translate well into the Oval Office.
No person who walks into the Oval Office ever has the experience in leadership that is required for the job. Some have more experience in the field of public office than others, but Donald Trump is unique. He has experience in the private sector, but not the public sector. The White House Office is set up in such a way that one must have an understanding of how
public-sector work is conducted. Bureaucracy and checks and balances get in the way of action, and the President deals with everything happening in the office. Trump is not used to working with a large cabinet and highly competitive staff, and does not take well to disloyalty. The president is now in a position where he must work well with others, be able to take what he can get, and adapt from the business world to the political world quickly, or else he will not be an effective leader.
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