The Donald . . . The Candidate

Back in the late eighties, Donald Trump, asked about running for President, said, "Everybody wants me to do it!"  Well, he's finally doing so, after teases toward running every four years since then, announcing his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination yesterday, only two days after his sixty-ninth birthday.

His announcement was a long, incoherent ramble that included talking points on curbing illegal immigration by building a wall on the Mexican border (and misrepresenting the effect of immigrants on the country, accusing them of driving up the crime rate) and complaints about the bad trade deal with China (there is no actual trade deal, just a "most favored nation" trade status awarded to China by the U.S.).  But I think he's no less serious a candidate than Ronald Reagan was in 1980, despite Reagan's inability to name the president of France.  Trump is talking about creating jobs, something he's done;  he clearly thinks that our current trade relations with China stink and he wants to negotiate a better deal with the countries we trade with, particularly the Chinese, than any deal current leaders in Washington could negotiate - and and he's good at making deals.  We need new infrastructure; the Donald wants to build things.  He already has.  We're broke; the Donald has been there, and he's gotten himself out of bankruptcy.  Social Security is under a threat of being "'reformed' out of existence;" the Donald wants to bring more money into the system.

No, Trump isn't going to win the Republican presidential nomination, but he'll be very effective in forcing Republican presidential candidates not named Rick Santorum to talk about what their policies are going to do for the little guy and how they're going to address economic issues they've evaded through their own airheaded rhetoric. That will hardly be a bad thing.