The Presidency as the Art of the Deal The billionaire GOP front-runner talks trade, taxes and his special fitness for the White House.By Joseph Rago see note please
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-presidency-as-the-art-of-the-deal-1448062143
More Trump l’oeil from the lout….rsk
The celebrity billionaire real-estate tycoon turned Republican presidential front-runner has been misjudged and underestimated, not least by us. “I thought I’d come over and if for nothing else, say hey, I do a nice job. So when I listen to Dan just kill me on Sundays, at least I’ll say, well, I tried, OK.”
We on the Journal editorial board would rather cover than participate in the presidential vortex, but then Mr. Trump is a self-reliant phenomenon and the first person is thus unavoidable. Our commentaries in these pages and on our Fox News program have rarely been friendly to Mr. Trump, to put it diplomatically, though we had more immediate reason to wonder if our encounter on Monday would come off as scheduled weeks before.
Last week Mr. Trump went bananas over an editorial—published in print Thursday—that recapped the Republican primary debate and suggested that “it wasn’t obvious that he has any idea what’s in” the Pacific Rim free-trade deal that he reviles. In an early-a.m. tweet storm, Mr. Trump responded that the “dummies” at “the failing @WSJ” are “so wrong, so often” and demanded a retraction and apology. In a cable-TV hit, his second on the topic that day, he ventilated: “They’re third rate. They write so many bad editorials. Whoever the editorial-board top person is—and I think I actually know who the top person is—they ought to resign because they’re incompetent.”
Mr. Trump has since abetted fresh disturbances of the peace by seeming to say he was open to requiring American Muslims to register in a database and suggesting the government should close mosques—but four days ago, he was prepared to let trade editorials be bygones, mostly: “You don’t know me. But never mind, because you don’t know me. Now we know each other. See, now I’ll be very insulted.” He was joking—and also, not.
In a word, we got the full Donald J. Trump experience, albeit unmediated by television cameras and featuring the principal on his best behavior. He didn’t call anyone a moron or a pathetic loser, at least anyone present in the room. Mr. Trump’s entourage included his adult daughter Ivanka, and they were as likely to invoke their trophy properties and the logistics of pouring concrete as they were trade, immigration and the economic nationalism that has carried him to the apex of the GOP field.
Mr. Trump was gregarious throughout the 98-minute exchange, grandiose in his opera-buffa way—class, pure class—and at times revelatory about his economics, his unconventional campaign and what he views as his special fitness for the presidency.
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Mr. Trump begins by supplying a variety of predictions he has made, “all of which were right.” In 2000 he warned of Osama bin Laden; “it was before the World Trade Center came down.” In 2003, he says, he opposed the Iraq war; “so that was good vision, I’m only saying this in terms of vision.” He then warned President Obama about setting a date to withdraw too soon; “now there’s all sorts of bedlam . . . and ISIS came out of that disaster too.” He took over a moribund Bronx development project that had been under construction for three decades; “I got it done and now it’s open and a tremendous success.” The political class believed he wouldn’t run; “and now I’m killing everybody, OK—by a lot.”
This roll call isn’t merely meant to show Mr. Trump is canny, a superior business-political mind who can see around corners and play every angle. He’s trying to persuade us to judge his adventure in politics by the same disinterested standards that apply in his business career—on the merits.
Mr. Trump cites as an example his $200 million redevelopment of the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., which he and Ms. Trump are converting into a luxury hotel. The Trump Organization won the project from “the Obama administration, which is impossible,” he says, overcoming (unspecified) internal White House opposition on account of his politics because his proposal was so objectively better than the others. “And so there is a certain vision that I hope we can be graded on—like whether it’s the post office, the vision for the Old Post Office, they like that the best,” he explains.
“We’re under budget, ahead of schedule,” Mr. Trump relates in an aside. “Arguably a first for Pennsylvania Avenue,” Ms. Trump deadpans.
Mr. Trump’s vision for the White House, and arguably a major part of his appeal, is that he’ll bring this successful business model to Washington, apply it both to Congress and world-wide, and triumph over the status quo. He seems to view most of human life as a series of transactions and in the unsentimental, Darwinian universe he inhabits, the deals are always zero-sum.
Take the Keystone XL pipeline. He’d “100%” provide the approval the Obama administration has denied, “but I would rather negotiate a better deal.” Mr. Trump observes that “without eminent domain, that pipe wouldn’t go 15 feet,” so he would ask its developers to “give the people of the United States a piece of the profit.” He throws out 25%. If they refuse, “then I’d say let’s not do it. And you know what’s gonna happen? They’re gonna come back and give it to me. So we’ll take 15% then, OK.”
Mr. Trump discusses policy at such a high altitude that details about how his vision will be realized are often thin to nonexistent. He waves off concerns that his tax reform—which he says he wrote himself with one economist and one tax expert, “who are respected”—would blow up the federal fisc. The plan would collapse the seven individual income brackets down to four, with a top rate of 25%, and slash the corporate rate to 15%, adding about $10 trillion to the deficit on a dynamic basis. Normal voters don’t care about white papers, he observes.
Only journalists, Mr. Trump says, expect “a 14-point thing on something, on anything, right, you know, policy. . . . I always find the people don’t want it.” Anyhow, “in the real world,” campaign proposals are opening bids and this or that provision will be traded away to get a deal through Congress. “When you negotiate, you want to go in from strength, you don’t want to go in—you understand what I’m saying. So I’m going in with a plan and I have room in my plan,” he says.
Trump supporters may discount the mechanics of policy-making because of another undeniable chunk of his appeal: his invincible self-confidence. “My life has been about winning, even club championships—I won a lot of them. But my life, I know how to win, and my life has been about winning and I’m not doing this for my health,” he says. “People said, ‘Oh well, he’s doing it because he’s having a good time.’ It’s not actually a good time, I can think of things I’d rather be doing, to be honest, but we’re making tremendous progress. I know what a good job we can do.”
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Mr. Trump speaks in lengthy recursive loops that fold back on themselves, over and again, and he rarely makes a point once when seven or eight times will suffice. But amid his disorganized meditations, Mr. Trump did make some news about his approach to global trade.
Mr. Gigot noted that “you said in the last debate you’re a 100% free trader but you just don’t like some of the deals that have been negotiated.”
Mr. Trump: “Correct.”
Mr. Gigot: “So is there an example of a deal, trade deal, that we’ve done in the past that you like, that you point to as a model?”
Mr. Trump: “Not many. Nafta was a disaster. Not many. We could have great deals.” He then detours into corporate inversions, made-in-Japan backhoes, currency devaluation, Chinese hotel furniture, the recent GOP debate and the editorial he disliked. For the record, Mr. Trump always knew China wasn’t a party to the Pacific pact.
Mr. Gigot tried again: “But you said you don’t like the big deals, so you like bilaterals. But is there an example of one that the U.S. has negotiated or signed that you like in recent history?” Mr. Trump: “No.”
Mr. Gigot: “The Colombia deal, the Korea deal, the Australia deal?” Mr. Trump: “No, I don’t like any of them. I think we’re bad negotiators.”
Mr. Trump tells us “I totally, I totally, like free trade,” but the contradiction is that his campaign hasn’t tapped a protectionist vein so much as the mother lode. As he tells it, his objection isn’t to trade deals per se but the disinclination of the U.S. government to leverage tariffs to obtain terms more favorable to the U.S.—and especially to take on the Chinese, Trump-style.
“They’ve made so much money off us,” Mr. Trump says, noting a trade imbalance that “somebody said the exact number is gonna be this year $505 billion.” (The Census Bureau pegs the 2014 U.S.-China deficit at $342.6 billion.) “They’ve taken our jobs, they’ve taken our money, they’ve taken our manufacturing, our base.”
He adds: “We have the power to get them to be fair. I think we have a lot of power over China economically. I think our big power over China is economic. If we ever threatened to stop being nice to them economically, meaning, you know, where they can sell their goods to us, we have tremendous power. We don’t use the power.”
Would the trade war that could ensue harm the U.S. economically?
“I mean honestly, when you say will it hurt us, it could, it may, or, look, it’s a chess game, it’s a poker game,” Mr. Trump replies. “And we’ll find out who the best poker player is. I could tell you it’s not Obama and it’s not these guys that are running against me, believe me, cause they don’t have a clue. . . . I don’t want to put the tax on. But I say this, if you ever threatened China with a tax, a tariff . . . they would come to the tables, if they believe you. Now if some idiot that’s running for office that never did anything said that, they wouldn’t have any fear.”
So who does Mr. Trump listen to on economics, where does he seek counsel? “Honestly, I feel that I have such a vast feeling for it that I really—you know, Milton Friedman was good—but I don’t really listen to anybody,” he says. “I just put it in and I have a feeling for, it’s almost common sense, it’s a business instinct.
“I was told don’t come into Manhattan, don’t ever come into Manhattan, it’ll be the wrong thing, you know, by my father. I love my father, but he said you’ll never—I mean it’s not our territory, it’s not for us. And I came into Manhattan and did great. It’s basically I’ve seen it all and it’s my own instinct for economics.”
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Once the voting begins, Mr. Trump wouldn’t be the first chief executive aspiring to public office, or the last, to discover that the rules of politics and the rules of commerce are rarely fungible. Not because politicians are dummies, or not all of them anyway. Democracies are animated by competing interests and closely held convictions, and the incentives aren’t for profits but power, for its own sake or to achieve ideological goals. The reason there aren’t more deals in modern Washington is that there are checks and balances and deep public divisions over what government should and can do.
Then again, maybe the rules themselves have changed. In 2007 few pros thought Mr. Obama, an apprentice, could slay the vampire bride of Hillary Clinton (and look where that got us). Maybe the same wing-it impulse is catching up on the GOP side, Mr. Trump is right and he better understands the moment of another remarkable election.
The universal expectation on the left and right, including on these pages, has been that Mr. Trump at some point would spontaneously self-combust. He hasn’t. Instead, he has led most polls since he announced in June—ask him about it, or don’t, and he’ll explore his popularity in depth, along with his achievements, his rallies, his crowds, the shortcomings of his adversaries, his media coverage, and did he mention his polls?
But more to the point, Mr. Trump has set the agenda and dominated the shape of the race. Perhaps otherwise sensible voters really do prefer Mr. Trump’s Trump-knows-best governing philosophy to gravitas, discretion, a more-than-passing engagement with national affairs and other traits that used to befit an American president.
Mr. Trump is aimed 100% on the primaries now, not that he isn’t also peering ahead to the general. “I care about, you know, I’m running against, it was 17 people, now it’s 15 people. When I came out, Bush was going to win, it was gonna be establishment Bush. Bush is a stiff. And I let people know that Bush is a low-energy person, we don’t need a low-energy person. Otherwise you’re not gonna need a Wall Street Journal, believe me, nobody’s gonna want to read it because there’s not gonna be anything left. And I came out and I hit Bush hard and he’s gone, and then I hit Walker hard and he’s gone.”
He’ll do the same, he predicts, to Mrs. Clinton. “My point is that I haven’t focused on Hillary yet. When I focus on Hillary, I will beat her cause she was the worst secretary of state in the history of our country. The whole world collapsed around her. . . . I think she’s easier than beating some of these guys that I have to beat right now.”
As Mr. Trump is on his way out, he says he’ll stay in the race beyond Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, even if he gets napalmed by super PACs (a John Kasich outfit started to unload this week) and notches losses in those states. “That could happen and, again, I’m self-funding my own campaign, you know, but you’re right, I could get that. And we’ll give it back to them, but we’ll see what happens. You never know, you never know, it’s politics and you never know what’s going to happen. But we’re in there pitching and hopefully we do a good job.”
It’s politics, not business, but you never know. Maybe it’s time to start imagining Mr. Trump, come January 2017, in possession of the nuclear launch codes.
Mr. Rago is a member of the Journal editorial board.
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