December 21, 2018

trumpDEC21

I’ve chosen a few key paragraphs … But I strongly suggest you click on the link at the bottom for a really interesting observation … I’ve always said that the main reason I am ‘ kinda rooting ‘ for the Trumpster is that , at long last , he’s not the ‘ typical ‘ bullshit career politician being evasive , spewing the same rhetoric that we’ve all heard a million times and never actually saying anything ! …

This article points out the ‘ anti-political ‘ approach of Trump that I find appealing …

The upshot is that turning a profit requires a hard-headed ‘ unpresidential ‘ sometimes frantic management approach quite different from the style embraced by our political elites. Key decisions often had to be made on the spot , not shoved off for ‘ further study ‘. Can you imagine President Obama personally overseeing a large downtown Chicago hotel with 250 poorly educated employees all the while trying to put 500 heads in beds 365 days a year against competitors fighting for the same clientele ?

He wouldn’t last a week.

Hotels are not a business for delicate egos and soft rhetoric. Indeed , the willingness to take huge financial risks and successfully browbeat tough opponents is a recipe for creating an industry dominated by super-sized egos or , to use Spanish slang , people with cojones. Nice guys harboring self-doubts or are unwilling to stage temper-tantrums fall by the wayside. Its all Darwinian.

Leadership by necessity is highly personal. You cannot appoint a committee to investigate when a desperate 9 P.M. call from the front desk tells you that there’s no hot water and hundreds of guests are threatening to check out and are refusing to pay. You telephone the chief engineer and you command him , no ifs, ands or buts , to haul his ass down to the boiler room and fix the problem. If he explains that he’s on vacation , or that the problem is not fixable , you fire him and contract his assistant and make him an offer he cannot refuse … ” fix the f…king water problem or join the unemployment line ”. If that doesn’t work , find somebody who can solve the mess and don’t worry about being offensive.

A larger political issue resides here beyond explaining President Trump’s ‘ unpresidential ‘ behavior. Fewer and fewer business people now enter politics either as candidates for office or as top administrators , a huge loss of talent. What company CEO wants to be grilled by senators , all of whom lack private sector experience , about the multiple lawsuits , accusations of discrimination , fights with the IRS , rumors of bribery and why , to be hypothetical , 10 years ago he evicted an impoverished disabled elderly lady of color with a dozen cats from her hotel room ? Recall how Mitt Romney was excoriated for his association with Bain Capital for destroying jobs and widening the wealth gap ? Being a white male is bad enough ; being a white male businessman is truly toxic.

We’ve come a long way from the 1950s when the Eisenhower cabinet was described as “ Nine Millionaires and a Plumber ‘.

Indeed , it was once commonplace , especially during war years , for successful businessmen to enter government and get paid a symbolic ‘ dollar a year ‘.