Saturday, January 7, 2017

My opinion on Trump's Job as President Elect

The PEOTUS era of Trump is coming to a close, and so far here are the results:

-Over 10,000 American jobs saved, some with deals, others with threats, others with encouragement.
-Some tweets were made, arguably more than necessary.
-Cabinet picks, some good, some bad.

The last point is pretty average, this happens with every president elect.  Though, I would say that's not much of a defense, as he was elected to be better than a typical politician.  We can give him that his choices may be limited, and a cabinet won't make decisions for him, but it's still at least slightly troubling,

The tweets, amazingly enough, are not causing nuclear war, despite fearmongering from Robert Cialdini to that effect.  It is annoying people though, and he perhaps shouldn't do this.  But that's more a problem for his re-election effort than for the American People.  It's NOT dangerous, and if he wants to bypass the press to reach the American People directly, there's probably a better way.

The jobs, honestly, there's no reason to criticize this.  Sure, he could have done better in many if not all cases, but even saving a single job is more than either Bush or Obama ever did for the American People.  I appreciate this, I think he could have squeezed in some more jobs, but a series of B moves by far outranks the straight F's of the Obama and Bush Administrations.  I do agree with Bernie Sanders that he could have done more, but I don't agree with downplaying what good he did do,  There's also the fact that no president ELECT that I'm aware of has ever done anything like this, especially in my lifetime.  Usually they just pick their cabinet and sit back, waiting for inauguration, Trump instead stepped up for the worker, and even if he could have done it better, we'd be wrong not to at least give credit where it is due,

So we can rank this:

-Jobs saved - great - Not Perfect, but it is unusual for someone to do this as PEOTUS anyway, so props.
-Tweets - Harmless - NOT creating actual problems, but can hurt his re-election chances, remains to be seen if reaching Americans directly really is his reason.
-Cabinet Picks - Bad - He fucked up here, no more than usual, but that's not an excuse because he was elected to be better than the status quo.

Overall - Good - But only because he continued saving jobs after some of his questionable cabinet picks.  This hints that they will not influence him much, but rather work FOR him.  That remains to be seen, but still.

All that said, there is a difference between being an actually good POTUS and a good PEOTUS.  10,000 jobs over a month and a half is great for someone who hasn't signed any laws, but for someone who has, well, it's ok, but he'll have the power to do more than this.  There IS cause for cautious optimism, but I do mean CAUTIOUS, we will have to wait and see,

Addendum - I haven't addressed US/Russia relations because he can't officially better than until he is sworn in, officially they are damaged, but that's Obama's doing, not Trump's.  Well, Obama and the media's.  Obviously, they will improve when he is sworn in, but I would say right now, at best, we're READY to have better relations.

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