Electoral Politics — April 11, 2011 1:59 am

The Rise of the Non-Politician

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Donald Trump is redefining what it means to be a politician. But are his tactics good for America?

It reads like a thriller novel: a convoluted, intricate conspiracy created to undermine the Presidency and paralyze the nation. Far-left socialist radicals hiding in the alleyways of Chicago, a city of corruption and deception. A campaign launched in a terrorist’s living room. A Kenyan fooling America into believing he is a citizen, and launching himself to the Presidency.

And not an ounce of it is true, of course. The degree of paranoia that surrounds President Obama’s rise to the White House is insulting not only to our leader, but to the very office which he holds, and to the sensibility of millions of Americans nationwide. Politicians on both sides of the aisle know this. It has been proved time and time again that President Obama was born in Hawaii, as much a state as any other. He legitimately won the Presidency, as the nation witnessed on November 4th, 2008, and the politicians against his policies know that the fallacious conspiracy regarding his identity does not deserve an ounce of anyone’s time.

But the problem isn’t with the politicians. It’s with a new class of individuals with zero political experience and a surprising amount of self-confidence who have infiltrated our political discourse. No, it’s not Obama who is sabotaging our democracy – it is men like Donald Trump. Mr. Trump, who has slandered the President with the most heinous accusation – doubting that he is an American – has never held a political office before, nor has he run a campaign. Suddenly, he sees himself fit to be the leader of the free world. This is a man who has experienced bankruptcy several times first-hand – and yet, he thinks he can heal the economy.

And to top it all off, he’s polling well. Trump, surprisingly, seems to have energized the most misguided part of the conservative base. Not one other credible career statesman endorses his outrageous claims.

What is concerning is not only that Trump has skewed the discourse in a shameless direction, but also the fact that he lacks the necessary qualifications and the humility necessary when leading the world. You need experience to be President. Firing people on day one will not restore jobs. Trump’s attention-seeking statements undermine the rest of the GOP as well, a group of individuals who is working hard to bring the country back on track in the way they think is best. As others push forth economic proposals, foreign policy solutions, and relevant answers as to what should be done about the debt, non-politicians like Donald Trump and Herman Cain are playing the “un-American” card, slandering people they do not agree with in order to de-legitimize them. Unfortunately, their actions de-legitimize the very real efforts of Republican politicians nationwide.

We need to not give non-politicians the microphone they need to distract us all from what’s really important. Prospective candidates like Trump, lavishing in a richesse that disconnects them from the average American, make the GOP look like a disoriented political train wreck, and make the Democrats look like an anti-American conspiracy plotting to corrupt and destroy the nation. It is candidates that have no sense of what being a candidate means that influence the discourse in such a negative direction. Mr. Trump seems never to have taken the basic “Running a Good Campaign 101″ class that all politicians go through in their first race. And any real politician’s first race is never for the nation’s highest office. The fact that Obama currently leads Trump 52-34 shows that his tactics, though they may be working for his base, are not working with the rest of America.

So, where is Sarah Palin again? Her supporters now seem a lot more reasonable.

Photo credit: Michele Sandberg via Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DonaldTrumpFeb09.jpg

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Humza Bokhari Staff Writer Humza Bokhari '14, a History and Science concentrator in his third year at the college, hopes to bring to the table a rather unconventional perspective: though born in California, he's spent most of his life outside the United States (in Pakistan for the most part, but also in England and Nigeria).
  • Anonymous

    I agree that Donald Trump sucks, but I disagree that we should discount the value of amateur politicians and long-shot candidates. Sure, few of them have the “necessary qualifications” to be president, but they have no chance of winning anyway. Their value is in their contribution to the discourse and the agenda, which you say they are poisoning, which is completely true in this case, but false in general.

    For example, I think that Ralph Nader did a lot of good for the discourse, even if he did harm for Gore. Steve Forbes sounded crazy with some of his economic positions when he ran in 96 and 00, but many of those same ideas are pretty mainstream now.

  • Humza Bokhari

    You make some valid points. However, I would contend that Mr. Nader was in a fundamentally different category than Mr. Trump. For one, Nader’s numerous presidential runs provided him experience running on the national stage. In his highly relevant run in 2000, Nader did contribute to the discourse. I am not, therefore, arguing against long-shot candidates. Our current president was one, and whether or not a candidacy is a long-shot one does not correlate with a candidate’s experience (think Vice Pres. Biden, for example). Another reason Nader was so great for the discourse was that Nader was an issues candidate that was not pandering to any constituency and not trying to win. The Greens work on a policy-based platform; remember – unless I’m mistaken, in 2004 Nader told Kerry he’d be willing not to run if Kerry picked up some of the issues that mattered to him and campaigned on them. However, Trump does want to win and he is pandering to certain constituencies – that is polluting our discourse.
    As for Mr. Forbes, unlike Mr. Trump he had political experience: note his work with Reagan and Christine Todd Whitman on economic policy prior to his runs. Neither Nader or Forbes, I would argue, were “amateur” politicians.
    (by the way, my information on Nader and Forbes is from Wikipedia – so I could be wrong. Thanks!)

  • Anonymous

    Okay I can concede on Forbes and Nader. But I still object to drawing the line between politicians and non-politicians. In part, this is because “politicians” has a negative connotation but is being used in a positive way here; in part it’s because it’s poorly defined.

    I would offer “fringe vanity candidate” as the category of candidate which does harm in the sense you described in the article. This would include Trump, who might be running for attention or to win despite the long odds, but probably not because he really thinks America needs to keep talking about Obama’s birth certificate. It would not include Forbes and Nader, who might be called “fringe issue candidates,” Mitt Romney, whom we might call a “mainstream vanity candidate,” or Michele Bachmann, whom we might call a “mainstream issues candidate.”

    You might object to some of the specific categorizations, but do you see why this scheme could be more helpful than politicians/non-politicians? I think that it helps give a clearer sense of campaign motivations.

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    Now a days, Politics are very worst. I feel that, the main reason for bribe is politics, they only created bribe but not all. I am saying about some people. It is “democratic country” but now we won’t say this. Really it is correct, this scheme gives a clearer sense of campaign motivations.

  • Humza Bokhari

    You’re right. I would essentially call a “fringe vanity candidates” like Trump “non-politicians”. What contributes to the vanity, I think, is the fact that he hasn’t run. I don’t know; again, I agree on a lot of what you’ve written, but the difference between “politicians” and “non-politicians”, I would say, is having political experience. If you don’t and you’re running for president, then that is pretty vain and it’ll be hard to establish a niche. I’ll also admit I was wrong in not discussing Perot, who ran an at-times-legitimate candidacy on his business background.
    My main problem with Trump was that because he hasn’t ever run for anything before, he doesn’t know that some issues – like the certificate – should be off the table and not used to one’s advantage. I am actually using “politician” in a positive way, which is strange. I think “career politician”, an even more negative term, could encapsulate the positive connotation even more. These are people, who though they may be imperfect, know the ropes and how the game is played. And I’d say you need to know them before jumping into a Presidential race. That said, my distinction is problematic, and thanks for bringing that up. Few things can easily be lumped in two categories.

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