Sure, real hard to get stuff done with a homogenous house and senate

If you have more than enough money to last you 10 lifetimes and value fame over money. why does it matter?

Of the 3 main reasons for running for president listed in the article, I'd think that Trump's gotta be the first one. But who knows, maybe he'll run for governor somewhere eventually?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/republi...ning-1.3162021

No, he wasn't. Horrible business owner, horrible governor, horrible president. Good at throwing out the first pitch.

What does any of that have to do with his skill at being a politician?

Jesus... ok, create a thread about it... We can debate the "skill" the C-student-in-Chief possessed. Can't wait.

Trump's most notable insults

Hillary Clinton — “Hillary Clinton was the worst secretary of State in the history of the United States," Trump told Business Insider.

His account on April 16 also retweeted an attack on Clinton: “@mplefty67: If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” Trump said a campaign staffer was responsible and deleted the tweet.

No need. The most important skill a politician possesses is getting votes. You're simply talking about something else.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elec...George_W._Bush
GW won 9/10 major elections including two terms as president of the US. His record stands for itself: he was an excellent politician.

What candidate allows a staffer to tweet in his name without supervision? That's like allowing an unsupervised staffer to put racist comments in your newsletter.

If you change the meaning of the word "politician" to be something stupid and irrelevant, Bush was a superb politician!

He lost Florida by any comprehensive recount. He only took Florida because the conservative Supreme Court decreed there "just wasn't time" to conduct a recount, a convenient one-time-only super special precedent. He also lost the general.

Ohio was also shady in 2004, but he still had the country fooled on 9/11 and Iraq at that time. So there's your "skilled" politician.

We all know what his team did to McCain in S. Carolina, and Richards in Texas. "Skilled" rumors of black love children and gayness, respectively. Skilled.

Winning elections is what matters. If you dont win an election you arent a successful politician.

This is all part of the skillset. Welcome to politics.

I tend to avoid condoning fraud and other unethical initiatives by rationalizing "well, that's just the way things are." It's kinda the reason our empire is dying. But, that's probably me just being "naive."

He lost Florida... by any ethical, exhaustive measurement.

my guess, also:

How Does Trump End?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...f#.VbXLZ_lVhBc

By Bob Shrum, Democratic presidential strategist.

Trump is ripe for a Bentsen-Quayle moment in the first debate. Bush, Rubio, et al—no longer reticent in the face of Trump’s pandering to the basest elements of the base, the “crazies”—are preparing the putdown right now. The question is who gets the right opening first. But one candidate who won’t be looking for the opportunity is Cruz; he’s angling to take the reins of Trump’s buckboard of bigotry when Trump falls off and then ride it to the nomination.

He may have to wait. Trump can be scorched in the debate; but he won’t flame out because he won’t run out of money, even if he is a few billion shy of ten. He can hold on indefinitely, and he’s not the type to recognize reality and retreat from the race. In the end, denied a nomination he can’t win, there’s a more-than-reasonable chance that he pulls a Perot and runs as an independent. That’s what I’m rooting for and would advise the Great Bloviator to do. The “crazies” deserve a voice, and he’s it. And the GOP deserves to pay a price—the presidency—for appeasing and exploiting the politics of nativism and resentment that has spawned and nourished the low, mean Know-Nothingism of Donald Trump.

also, can we add the USFL to Trump's long list of corporate bankruptcies?

It's part of the reasons the word politician gets used negatively, it's often about BS'ing people, shady deals, everything but the actual issues. Politicians are salesmen. Story is, GW could work a room with the best of them. Supposedly, he could be introduced to a line of strangers at a fundraiser, and call each of them by their names for the rest of the night. Say what you will about his Texas accent and however you feel about his ideals, he was able to sell them to the people for his entire political career.

I think the Trump support comes from a lot of people who are extremely dissatisfied with the Republicans performance especially in Congress. Even though Romney was a moderate 2012 POTUS election turnout numbers were low. Could have been Romney "ground game" but I don't think there is much doubt that some folks who vote Republican regularly didn't show up.

No, that's what the word means. That's the difference between politician and statesman as they've been used for at least over a century. Nobody called Bush a statesman.

Those are means to an end, and the final reckoning for a politician is what ends they actually achieve. The job does have expected output.

The fact that he could get elected despite his ineptitude as a leader is really sufficient evidence of his skill as a politician. Say what you will about Florida, he was close enough for that to matter, in a race against the VP of the fairly popular outgoing president. You're not making any points that detract from him being a superb politician.

Seriously, being a good politician is barely even a compliment. Don't go HAM over this because of your blind hatred of Bush.

Once again, politician != statesman. Being good at your job once you get elected to it has nothing to do with being a good politician. If he didn't do a good job in office, it's not because he was a bad politician, its because we elected a politician instead of someone who could actually do the job well.

You're just playing a silly semantic game. W is a likable guy who had great connections and was absolutely terrible at his job. The only thing he was good at is the birth lottery.

If someone's a professional poker player and someone else describes them as "a 'professional' craps player or something," would you think that correcting them is a silly semantics game as well? *shrug* Words have meanings, and while words often have multiple meanings, it was very clear which meaning of 'politician' foldn was using and Jiggs was the one going HAM over it. You guys were just jumping on it because it was foldn.

And playing the birth lottery card is much sillier than any semantics game. Yes, none of us are greater than the lot we pulled in the great birth lottery, and while you and I are merely top 1 in 1000, GWB was more like top 1 in 10000000. And it's good to be aware of that to keep a proper perspective on things, but that's about it.

"Even though," or did you meant to write, "because"?


[Any grammar experts care to tell me if my question mark above belongs inside or outside the closing quotation mark?]

but you don't get to decide what counts as achievement. History would have to be the judge and even history usually ums and ahs about these things.

Against that what a ****ing disaster he was. Possibly even GWB came to realise what an idiot he was to start the Iraq war which was not a small mistake by any standards.