The candidate's lack of a traditional political agenda is key to his anti-political appeal.
Peter Suderman
Reason
The most striking thing about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is how mindless it is. There is no plan behind it, no grand strategy or driving ideological goal, no political mission statement to speak of. The campaign seems to consist almost entirely of Trump—now leading the GOP field by a solid 10 point margin—roaming from microphone to microphone saying whatever ridiculous thing comes to his mind at the moment. He is calculating only in the sense that he gravitates toward attention-grabbing overstatement. Trump, who is fond of calling enemies morons, dummies, and lightweights, is running the stupidest presidential campaign in memory.
The empty bravado of Trump’s presidential campaign is captured nicely in this revealing quasi-profile from National Journal’s Andy Kroll. I call it a quasi-profile because mostly what it reveals is how little there is to learn about Donald Trump, presidential candidate.
Like any decent journalist, Kroll initially resisted the Trump phenomena, believing it to be a sideshow. But as Trump gained popularity in the GOP primary polls, Kroll set out with a somewhat novel plan to investigate the candidate: Rather than focus on the circus, he would make an earnest attempt to determine what Trump actually wanted to do as president.
Kroll flew to Laredo, Texas to watch a few of Trump’s media events near the border, and he contacted Trump’s not-particularly-responsive campaign team in a fruitless attempt to obtain responses to a few fairly basic questions ("Aside from immigration, if you were to put your name on one piece of domestic-policy legislation, what would it be?”).
Ultimately Kroll came up empty. Not because he didn’t put in the effort, but because there’s simply nothing to find.
More here:
http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/04/the-mindlessness-of-donald-trumpand-what?utm_source=jolt&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Jolt&utm_campaign=Jolt08062015A
