Is Trump sabotaging himself?

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

By Michael Gerson Opinion writer April 14 at 7:15 PM

Welcome to Donald Trump’s banana republic. “We’re going to have protests, demonstrations,” says Trump surrogate and confidante Roger Stone. “We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them.”

This is the Trump-world version of a counterpunch. Lose in a delegate-selection process you’ve known about for a year but didn’t prepare for. Respond with brutish threats of mayhem and personal harm.

Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Post. View Archive
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Some presidential candidates tease out the latent idealism of their fellow citizens. Trump promises to pay the legal bills of followers who assault protesters. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Those who believe that politics is a low and dirty business are often the ones who make it so. Trump has a genuine contempt for the profession he seeks to join, and he is doing his best to make it contemptible. He is featuring the kind of bullying vindictiveness that Richard Nixon took great pains to conceal. We don’t need to subpoena the tapes; we have the tweets. Trump will clearly do anything to become president.

Except hire an adequate campaign team, open a briefing book and make any real preparations to govern.

This is, by far, the most confusing aspect of Trump’s campaign. He may be ruthless, but it remains unclear what he actually wants. Three or four weeks ago, many in the Republican Party seemed prepared to accept his nomination, if he could pivot to a more presidential style. Focus groups of GOP voters found some discontent with Trump’s excesses but little of the disdain that motivates GOP elites. “Non-Trump voters,” an Annenberg Center focus group concluded, “did not demonstrate the kind of true ideological cleavage that causes floor fights or makes delegates walk out of conventions.”

Fury over Trump in New York 
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Opponents of presidential candidate Donald Trump took to the streets of Manhattan to protest April 14, pledging to "fight back." Trump holds the lead ahead of the New York Republican presidential primary. (Reuters)
So all Trump had to do was act briefly like a normal candidate. What followed was an attack on the wife of his main opponent, another obsessive swipe at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, an answer on abortion that showed a complete lack of preparation and then a full-scale assault on the credibility of the Republican primary process (which he calls “absolutely rigged”). Hiding in a cave would have been a more effective political strategy.

The task required of Trump was not hard: Avoid being an insufferable, unstable, whiny buffoon for a few weeks. Why did he fail?

It is possible, of course, that Trump simply lacks impulse control. At this level of compulsion, we usually don’t grant people the nuclear codes.

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But there may be something different and deeper going on. In psychology, there is the concept called “self-sabotage” — behavior that (consciously or unconsciously) undermines a long-term goal. For most people this might involve procrastination or substance abuse. For Trump, it seems to come in the form of rambling public monologues and a late-night Twitter addiction. Trump’s recent behavior provides enough evidence to raise some questions: Does he honestly want the nomination? What is his real endgame?

It is possible that Trump began his presidential race as a lark, found an unexpected momentum and now realizes that the enterprise involves skills he does not possess. Trump’s actions (or lack of them) are consistent with this interpretation. A candidate who really imagined himself in the Oval Office would put together a campaign capable of counting delegates when it was early enough to matter. He would gather a serious policy operation that could form the core of a governing team. He would study up on obvious issues in preparation for obvious questions. Trump has done none of these things.

Self-sabotage can take many forms. It may be that Trump is calculating that he wants the nomination only on his own terms — like a college student who desires a degree, but only if he is spared the indignities of opening a book or attending a lecture. Trump may hope Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus brings him the nomination on a silver platter in the billionaire’s Cleveland hotel suite. And if Priebus doesn’t — if a serious, working campaign is an actual requirement to secure the Republican nomination — Trump is set to be a populist folk hero, energized by a “stolen” election. Playing the victim is Trump’s most comfortable pose. Maybe, deep down, it is the role he desires.

Desired or not, it is the role that Republicans should give him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-trump-sabotaging-himself/2016/04/14/ef568004-025a-11e6-b823-707c79ce3504_story.html

[Jazzhead]

It's an interesting theory.   Sort of like what would a dog do when he catches the car.   Trump's unexpected success coupled with his ego could well explain why he seems focused on destroying the GOP, not winning the Presidency.   The former's the goal he can achieve,  and can walk away from with his fortune and mobility intact.   The latter goal is no doubt unattainable, and since he knows that there's no reason to prepare for the responsibility.  He'll lose,  claim his martyrdom,  and the candidate that most resembles him - Hillary Clinton - will gain the office.   

[ABX]

I've often wondered this. Like his previous runs or almost runs for President, they almost seemed like publicity stunts to get the media talking about Trump again. I think this time, what was a publicity stunt got out of hand. Reality may be setting in and he would rather go down in flames with a big following thinking and writing that he is the greatest thing since Aqua Net than to actually have to face the reality of the job and the consequences.

On the other hand, somehow I think this is driven by his ego and he wants to go beyond his name on buildings. He wants his name in history books. He wants his picture in every classroom with little children reciting it. He wants his picture in embassies around the world and in the museums. It is all ego driven and he may be delusional to actually think he would be the greatest. I think he sees George Washington's painting at the top of the Library of Congress or Abraham Lincoln's monument and looks it it with jealousy that there isn't a monument to him.

Either way, his extreme missteps can only be summed up as either by design or gross incompetence.

[Frank Cannon]

Either way, his extreme missteps can only be summed up as either by design or gross incompetence.

I'm still on the gross incompetence bandwagon. Just looking through his history it shows plenty of examples of outright stupidity.

[jmyrlefuller]

This is, by far, the most confusing aspect of Trump’s campaign. He may be ruthless, but it remains unclear what he actually wants. Three or four weeks ago, many in the Republican Party seemed prepared to accept his nomination, if he could pivot to a more presidential style. Focus groups of GOP voters found some discontent with Trump’s excesses but little of the disdain that motivates GOP elites. “Non-Trump voters,” an Annenberg Center focus group concluded, “did not demonstrate the kind of true ideological cleavage that causes floor fights or makes delegates walk out of conventions.”

They obviously weren't looking closely enough, were they?

Either that, or this country has no opposition to liberalism anymore and we have transformed into the Europe we abandoned centuries ago.

[MACVSOG68]

So all Trump had to do was act briefly like a normal candidate. What followed was an attack on the wife of his main opponent, another obsessive swipe at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, an answer on abortion that showed a complete lack of preparation and then a full-scale assault on the credibility of the Republican primary process (which he calls “absolutely rigged”). Hiding in a cave would have been a more effective political strategy.

This has to be an easily recognizable problem, even to his most ardent supporters.  The New York Post endorsed Trump yesterday, but in so doing had this to say:

Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot — not just on the issues, but in his manner. The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned.

In other words, even from a paper that endorses Trump, they expect a complete transformation.  Not Likely.

[ABX]

Either that, or this country has no opposition to liberalism anymore and we have transformed into the Europe we abandoned centuries ago.

That's kind of a point I made a while back, we are turning into a European model of the political system where our Right isn't about individual liberty but about authoritarian means. It is no longer a fight of limited government and liberty versus big government and authoritarianism, but about who can use the government the most to force their positions.

Look at all the comparisons of Trump to Le Pen, and not just in a way from his critics, but his supporters cheer that on. How many on the right today cheer the BNP or Front National in Europe as an example of what we should be doing?