To understand why, it’s worth keeping in mind that my chief worries about Mr. Trump were never strictly ideological; they had to do with temperament and character.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t have worries based on Mr. Trump’s deviations from conservatism, a political philosophy he seems to have no real interest in or acquaintance with.
.. The more pressing concern many of us had about Mr. Trump is that he simply isn’t up to the job of being president. And much that has happened during the transition period has confirmed those concerns. One example: Last weekend Mr. Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said his administration would quickly put out its own health proposal, which would cover everyone now insured and cost much less.
One problem: There is no Trump proposal.
.. Which leads to my main worry about Mr. Trump: His chronic lack of restraint will not be confined to Twitter. His Twitter obsessions are manifestation of a deeper disorder.
.. Donald Trump is a transgressive personality. He thrives on creating disorder, in violating rules, in provoking outrage. He is a shock jock. This might be a tolerable (if culturally coarsening) trait in a reality television star; it is a dangerous one in a commander in chief.
He is unlikely to be contained by norms and customs, or even by laws and the Constitution. For Mr. Trump, nothing is sacred. The truth is malleable, instrumental, subjective. It is all about him. It is always about him.
Bad news: Trump is not becoming any more presidential
On three dimensions — temperament, competence and ideology — Trump’s conduct since the election has offered more basis for worry than for relief.
.. 63 percent of voters do not think he has the temperament to be president — including 26 percent of Trump voters.
.. Pick your adjective: thin-skinned, childish, unpresidential.
.. Sixty percent said he is not qualified to be president, including 23 percent of Trump voters.
.. shellshocked Trump team clueless about the magnitude of the task facing them. Really, all White House employees of the previous administration are out the door on Inauguration Day? How were they to know? Um, ask an experienced transition planner?
.. most of his choices so far convey the message that loyalty will be rewarded above all, and that Trump’s election night promise to “bind the wounds of division” was empty rhetoric.
.. This is a man who called the NAACP “un-American,” said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “Okay until I found out they smoked pot” and described a white civil rights lawyer as a “disgrace to his race.”
Axelrod: Election a ‘primal scream’
“You look at the exit polls and whether they got the top-line numbers right or not, what is clear is there was a hunger for change among a lot of Americans,” Axelrod said. “And those who felt strongly about those who were angered and disenchanted with government, overwhelmingly were supporting Donald Trump,
And those people backed Trump “notwithstanding the fact that two-thirds of them said they didn’t think he had the temperament or the qualifications” for the presidency, Axelrod said.
How Much Does Trump Really Want to Be President?
Blair says that Trump escaped collapse by convincing his creditors he was more valuable to them “financially alive rather than dead.” He proceeded to recoup his losses by shifting from real-estate deals to licensing his well-known name.
.. When asked if he is ever introspective, Trump replied, “I don’t like to analyze myself, because I might not like what I see.” When queried about his temperament, Trump said: “When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.” He said he “loved to fight” as a child, “any kind of fight, loved it, including physical.”
.. As a grade-schooler Trump threw cake around a birthday party and gave a teacher a black eye because he was ignorant. His behavior was so out of control that his parents exiled him upstate to a military academy. His experience there only cemented his bully-boy traits. Trump has described the students and the drill sergeants there as people who would “smack the hell out of you,”
.. But his success in capturing the GOP nomination against all odds seems to have created a belief in his own invincibility and reinforced his traits. “He is like a 13-year-old teenager who can stay up as late as he wants, eat junk food; there’s no adult who has the right to take away his phone and stop the tweeting.”
.. Yes, Trump’s lack of impulse control has also been an asset to him. He comes across as spontaneous, funny, and unscripted — the opposite of most politicians. “It’s the paradoxical effect of the bad little boy,” D’Antonio wrote in an article for CNN in March this year. “Yes, he’s out of line and must be taught to respect others. However, the sight and sound of someone behaving with such an unbridled enthusiasm is also thrilling.”