Today Donald J. Trump made official what those who spend time watching him, have long suspected. At 11:00 a.m. EDT, in a banquet hall in his famous Trump Tower, he told his fellow Americans he is running for President. For forty-five minutes he told his well-wishers why he wants the job. Herewith why Donald Trump should have the job.

Why not Donald Trump?

Conventional thinkers (a likely oxymoron, anyway) can quickly name half a dozen reasons why Donald Trump should not become President. He has never before stood for election to anything. He has given money to support other candidates. He talked about running for President five years ago. But until today, no one took him seriously. They pointed out he might have to surrender his empire, and the income from it, for the four or eight years he would serve as President. Men like him do not run for President; they try to buy Presidents. So said the conventional thinkers. Those same thinkers said he’d never run. Today he surprised them all. (And could in full justice look them all in the face and say, “You’re fired!”)

Donald Trump speaking to the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference. Photo by Gage Skidmore; CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License.

His Democratic opponents will likely say, “He will buy the Presidency itself and use it for his own personal profit!” (Of the two or three persons seeking the Democratic “pennant,” only Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., could say that with a straight face. “Clinton Foundation,” anyone?) Sadly, some of his Republican opponents will likely say the same. Not that it makes much sense. After all, the Constitution limits him to two terms. And every other President in recent memory, or at least every Democratic President in recent memory, has left the office richer than he entered it. How richer can Donald Trump get? He’s worth eight billion dollars as it is! (As he revealed today in his financial disclosure statement.)

No. Donald Trump wants to serve as President because he wants to serve. He sees some things someone must do. He knows no other person, who becomes President the usual way, will do them. Why not?

With any other President, [someone] calls [his] lobbyists. And they call the President. And they say, “You can’t do that! He takes care of me, and I take care of you, so you can’t do that!”

Donald Trump can “take care” of himself. He has never run for office before. So he has cut no deals with politicians or their bankrollers before. As he made abundantly clear this morning.

Why Donald Trump?

Donald Trump trumpeted his wealth before his well-wishers. Most people wouldn’t think that smart. Barack Obama, the Clintons, and their respective hangers-on made “wealth” an obscene concept. (Though except for Bernie Sanders, these hypocrites all have great wealth themselves, though none as great as Donald Trump has.) But Mr. Trump knows what his detractors want you to forget: he came by his wealth honestly. And one who built an eight-billion-dollar empire, can easily serve as chief executive of a country, even a world superpower.

But more than that, Trump has experience in troubleshooting. He built the Wollman Rink in Central Park, in three months and within budget, after officials under direct control by City Hall failed to build it after six years. He did make his share of business mistakes, though. So he has gotten into trouble, and gotten out of it. Along the way, he has learned a few lessons. He hopes to apply those lessons to the affairs of state.

Most importantly of all, Donald Trump learned how to negotiate. Everything wrong with the United States today, and where it “sits” in the world, Donald Trump traces to bad deals. How would he negotiate differently? He gave an example: a thirty-five-percent tariff on every automobile an American company might build in a factory in, say, Mexico, and try to sell in America.

Why tariffs at all? Trump did not address this as a general principle. He merely said one thing everyone understands at once: America owes $18 trillion to the rest of the world. America would better make and use things here than there. In fact, tariffs, not income taxes, funded the government more than a century ago. (America did not have income taxes until the early part of the twentieth century.) And what does America offer the world, that a tariff would justly pay for? The United States Navy. In every age of exploration, travel, and trade, some influence must keep law and order on the high seas. In the days of the Roman Republic, whose Consuls called the Mediterranean “Our Sea”, the Roman Republican (later Imperial) Navy did this job. Beginning with Queen Elizabeth I, the Royal Navy did. Today the United States Navy does.

Trump also warned: today America owes $18 trillion to other countries, especially China and Japan. At $24 trillion, America will reach “the point of no return.” He wants to start paying that money back. And part of that means stopping the flow of money out of America. Here he named another reason to have a tariff, especially against the Chinese: he accused them of currency manipulation. Which brings up the key flaw in libertarian arguments for unfettered free trade in modern times: no country on earth adheres to a recognizable standard of intrinsic value. So any country can devalue its currency to make its goods artificially cheaper. His plan: renegotiate all current trade agreements.

Donald Trump has experience, hard lessons he learned in success and failure both, and a program. And he has one more thing not all his Republican rivals has: he satisfies the Vattel Criteria. He was born in-country to two citizen parents. The last time America elected an alien President, didn’t work out so well.

For those reasons, he should be the next President of the United States.

https://youtu.be/ysg0U3_5bOw