One of the "secrets" of Trump's political success is forcing his opponents to play his game, his rules. After 8 years of Obama, it was a change election year; in fact, Biden had taken himself out of the running, so it was an open election. Trump had a problem for his prospective candidacy; he did not have any obvious qualification for the Presidency; he had spent his whole adult career in the private sector; he had never spent a day in public service, not even as a member of the local school board. He wasn't a war hero, a governor or legislator; he had not served as part of an administration. He did not have special qualifications on public policy. He had one principal advantage, over and beyond his wealth: universal name recognition, particularly as the figurehead of the top-rated "The Apprentice" reality show franchise.
Of course, celebrity can be a two-way street. Trump had promoted his Presidential ambitions since at least 1988, including an aborted attempt in a quest for Perot's Reform Party nomination for 2000 and a cameo appearance during the 2012 GOP primary campaign. Still, the conventional playbook pained Trump as an unlikely successful candidate. For one thing, he had been a disloyal nominal Republican, changing parties several times over the prior 15-20 years, in fact endorsing both Hillary Clinton and Obama in the 2008 campaign as a then registered Democrat. By conventional party rules, Trump was a Republican in Name Only, a political death charge in GOP circles. Not to mention he had notoriously flip-flopped on immigration, having earlier blamed Romney's 2012 loss on his "cruel self-deportation policy", not to mention his views on economic policy, especially trade wars, violated recent decades of GOP support for free trade and was opposed by traditional business constituents (half of imports are resources for American products and services). Not to mention the idea of a billionaire Presidential candidate was tailor-made for Democrat traditional class warfare attacks, never mind inevitable allegations of trying to buy the Presidency. There was also Romney's "47 per cent" gaffe during the 2012 campaign. And Trump's businesses, real estate and construction are notoriously corrupt enterprises: "In the US, 'permitting and licensing regimes provide incentives to unscrupulous firms to seek advantages through corruption, and opportunities for local officials to peddle influence in exchange for improper inducements." The fact that Trump famously tried to abuse eminent domain to go after widow Vera Coking's home property (for his property's limousine parking) seemed to be s toxic response to Trump's unlikely populist rhetoric. There were other stories as well, such as Trump's battles against disabled veterans selling merchandise near his properties, which exposed his pandering for veterans' votes as hypocritical.
Still, the 2016 GOP field made a fatal strategic mistake; even though Trump's support seemed to hit a 25-30% ceiling, two other outsiders, Fiorina and Carson also seemed to combine for another 20% or so share, leaving the other 14 candidates fighting over about half of overall support. There was certainly something restive going on that Trump and the others were tapping into, and veteran politicians didn't know how to deal with it. On paper, Jeb Bush should have been the prohibitive favorite. Not only was he part of GOP royalty, like the Taft's, but he was arguably the shrewdest politician of his family, a popular two-term governor from a coveted purple state who had propped up Marco Rubio's candidacy from nowhere to take on Florida's GOP governor for the Senate during the Tea Party revolt of 2010. Not to mention his brother, former POTUS George W., was still hugely popular with the GOP base. It wasn't obvious that Trump's adolescent attack on Jeb's older brother was politically smart, if not simply for the fact family loyalty is strongly held by the conservative base.
Trump quickly capitalized on his perceived reputation of his business "success", job creator, etc. That seemed a tough sell to me, given his record of filing for bankruptcy several times, mostly taking on high-priced debt his businesses couldn't service. While he defensively argued that others besides him had also lost their shirts gambling on NJ casinos with neighboring states lusting for their fair share of gambling tax revenues, this was a classic boom/bust scenario with Trump investing near the top with high interest expenses that wouldn't be sustainable in a recessionary economy. Now it's true that Trump had in past interviews over the years targeted our trade deficit and advocated (failed) mercantilist policies, his soundbites were so patently absurd and unsupported--that US trade policy had been incompetently managed over the years by outsmarted negotiators--that he was a "masterful" negotiator, that it seemed hardly anyone would buy his snake oil hype. The trade deficit not only led to better prices and thus a higher standard of living, but surplus dollars held by foreign countries often make their way back to the US economy in terms of underwriting US debt and business investment, lowering related costs.
There were 2 strategic mistakes Trump had capitalized on. First, the other candidates were convinced that Trump's run would inevitably fail, and they wanted to court his supporters; attacks would be counterproductive in such an effort. Second, Trump capitalized on the fact that he, unlike them, had no reliance on external financial support. He specifically suggested that they had all come to him for past campaign contributions, allegedly a corrupt relationship at the expense of taxpayers. Now to me, that's a double-edged sword; it's like a john calling his whore a whore. In other words, even if Trump accused his opponents of being corrupt, how did Trump buying political influence not make himself look corrupt in the process? Why wouldn't Trump use his political power for corrupt purpose, e.g., the emoluments clause? I remember during the "debates" Trump argued that my preferred candidate, Rand Paul, had accepted his money. This was deliberately misleading. What Trump had contributed to was NOT Paul's political campaign, but a charity Rand Paul was involved with donating Central American eye surgery services.
So it's not surprising that Trump would attempt to rewrite the context of the Zelensky phone call, just like he argued "no collusion, no obstruction" for the Mueller problem, even as Mueller outlined almost a dozen grounds of obstruction. His attempt to pressure Zelensky into investigating the Bidens was "not a bug, but a feature". He's trying to tie the Bidens to corruption in Ukraine. Now I agree that Hunter Biden probably got his Ukraine gig more out of his surname and family connection than related expertise, but I'm not aware of specific allegations of corruption, of a quid pro quo. In fact, Hunter was with Burisma from 2017 through this year, during the Trump Administration, with Joe Biden out of power. Never mind the fact that foreigners have been doing business with Trump properties throughout his Presidency, an obvious "pay to play" form of corruption (just Google the topic and you'll pick up scores of relevant news stories); it takes chutzpah and utter hypocrisy for Trump to make his allegations; keep in mind Zelensky was only recently elected into power and there have been no allegations of corruption being perpetrated under his new administration.
Trump has made a number of deceptive defenses for his intervention with Zelensky, but it is impossible not to read his self-serving interest in raising the name of a 2020 political rival in wanting a favor from Zelensky. He is trying to argue that Zelensky wasn't aware that he had suspended military aid so there wasn't a quid pro quo. That defies common sense; there was no point in suspending promised aid without Ukraine knowing about it. He's arguing he was merely being a wise steward of taxpayer dollars, but the target of corruption was a self-serving politically motivated allegation, not corruption in the Ukraine military receiving the aid. The fact that it involved his political interests required his recusal from the process.
So Trump is trying to paint his intervention in Ukraine as a proxy over corruption, but it itself is corruption. He swore an oath to serve the national interest, not his own.
Is he guilty of an impeachable offense? Yes, unquestionably. Should the Democrats impeach him? Probably not. Trump's interventions have not worked I might argue as in the case of Clinton, the President should be censured and let the nation decide a year from now what to do with Trump. I, for one, will oppose his reelection.
