The Trump file – can he survive or even thrive, or will it all collapse

OPINION: When Trump was elected there were plenty of Americans (especially Democrats) who thought he was slightly mad and certainly did not think he would survive – the thinking was that he had no idea what he was getting into and would fall at the first real hurdle.

Well, none of that has so far happened. Despite his incredible operating style Trump has not only survived but continues to be full of ideas for making America great again. In this respect, the stats are all over the place. His approval rating is at an all-time low but at the same time, the economic indicators for the US are better than they were before he came along. I suppose the question is whether that is a temporary blip or the start of something real and more permanent.

One thing is certain and that is that he is certainly not mad and quite astute as a politician. He has not been phased by the roadblocks encountered and seems surprisingly willing to find other ways of doing things if his preferences are blocked, for example by Congress and the Senate. And he has surrounded himself with people who have been very successful in their own domains, so they are not fools. But for all of that, his list of actual accomplishments so far looks dreadfully thin, and he continues to skate on very thin ice when it comes to the ethics of being President.

I see that in one-quarter there is talk about grounds for impeachment which might or might not come to anything. To me, it seems amazing that there are not grounds for impeachment somewhere in all the things he has done. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of that idea.

So the question is, will it all collapse at some point or will Trump survive to the end of a first term. The truth is that only Donald Trump can answer that question because it depends on his behaviour, and that includes things that we don’t necessarily know about yet, and also to no small extent on the outcomes of his determination to do the things he has promised to do.

My feeling is that it could go either way. There could well be a spectacular “train crash” along the way which brings everything tumbling down and it would be a fair bet to find the Russians not too far from such an event. I think the weak area is international security. I think the world will find ways of surviving his views on issues like immigration (hardly just a US issue anyway) and free trade, but international security is another matter particularly if it potentially involves nuclear weapons.

In the absence of such a “train crash”, I think he has a fair chance of seeing the first term through but I think his list of accomplishments will fall well short of expectations and that could well make him a one term President. But that may depend on who runs against him.

If I was a Democrat I would be thinking long and hard about suitable future candidates, and about the kind of programme, they would have to put forward to both win over the electorate and fix the broken American electoral system.

By Bas Walker

This is another of Bas Walker’s posts on GrownUps.  Please look out for his articles, containing his Beachside Ponderings.