BILLIONAIRE SAVIOR SYNDROME Donald Trump’s emergence as a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate has to be compared to the last billionaire – Ross Perot – who burst onto the political scene in February 1992 on CNN’s
Larry King Live and completely altered that race and, in effect, elected Bill Clinton over President George H. W. Bush.
There are a few similarities between Perot and Trump but many differences, too:
• As billionaires they are seen by the public as
too rich to be corrupted by our dirty political culture;
• In a time of national economic distress, billionaires are seen as guys who know how to make money when none of us can; they know how to do all the things we
cannot do – in sum, many people think billionaires are smarter than anyone else; this is ironic as most people think billionaires don’t pay their fare share of taxes – yet they still want the billionaire to be the savior;
• Ross Perot and Donald Trump do share several characteristics that come from being rich: they are both their own bosses and thus the normal political and media rules do not apply to them;
• They have enormous egos;
• They don’t listen to people very well;
• They can get on
any show
any time they want – something only a sitting president can do;
• Now, how are Perot and Trump different?
• Perot is a Naval Academy graduate and thus was always a straight-laced square person who wanted to focus his campaign not on himself but more on the debt status of the federal government.
• Perot’s true – and heretofore-unknown – reason for running in 1992 was to ruin George H.W. Bush’s chance of being re-elected as payback for Bush’s criminal behavior in covering-up the truth about the POWs left behind – alive – in Vietnam when the war ended. Bush was head of the CIA in 1976 – and has been dirty on the issue ever since. Perot was out to “get” him for this perfidy – and he did.
• But that was all about a serious public policy issue -
not about the personal aggrandizement of himself;
• Donald Trump is all about
himself - period!
• Everything he touches has to have his name splashed all across it. (Will it become
The Trump White House if he wins?)
• Trump’s business and personal behavior over the years is not on the same level as Perot’s pioneering career in computers. Gambling casinos and three marriages are
not going to fit with the still-powerful Religious Right – even if much of what (now) says on China and OPEC and Obama strikes a responsive chord.
Conclusion: While our country is floundering in a weak economy, the allure of the billionaire savior can be intoxicating.
But American does
not need a savior!
We are America’s saviors!!!
Do not fall for the (momentary) allure of the easy fix – the idea that one rich man knows better than we do.
No, as we see with the Tea Party Movement, we, the American people, are pushing, clawing, scratching and fighting to change our country’s economic future. We
are saving the country!
We just need to keep on pushing – and, like the Founding Fathers – God’s grace will shine on us.
The Enron Memo is a potentially Huge Story!
