Trump is Not Becoming Any More Presidential

WASHINGTON -- Less than two weeks into the reality that Donald Trump will be our next president, the situation feels more ominous than on election night.

“At the right time, I will be so presidential you will be so bored,” Trump assured us back in April, when the notion seemed fanciful. “I know when to be presidential.”

Does he? On three dimensions -- temperament, competence and ideology -- Trump’s conduct since the election has offered more basis for worry than for relief.

That Trump’s temperament is a problem is underscored by exit polls showing that 63 percent of voters do not think he has the temperament to be president -- including 26 percent of Trump voters.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, it was possible to argue the temperament case either way. There was Presidential Trump, proclaiming that he would be “president for all Americans.” He dropped the talk about locking up “Crooked Hillary” in favor of praising her service to the country.

And then, increasingly, there was Tweeting Trump, starting with an assault on “professional protestors, incited by the media,” and continuing with a series of attacks on the “failing” New York Times “upset that they looked like fools in their coverage of me.” Pick your adjective: thin-skinned, childish, unpresidential.

Also in the basket of worries about temperament: Trump’s heedlessness to issues of conflict of interest and nepotism. The government is not, or shouldn’t be, a family business. Whether the federal anti-nepotism law technically applies to Jared Kushner, its spirit would clearly be violated by having Trump bring his 35-year-old son-in-law, entirely lacking in government experience, onto the White House staff.

And the arrangement would pile conflict upon conflict. Trump’s refusal to follow the practice of previous presidents and put his holdings in a blind trust means that his children (and spouses who benefit from their holdings) should be kept at arm’s-length from the workings of government -- not put on his transition team or in his White House.

On the subject of Trump’s competence, again, voters knew what they were getting: 60 percent said he is not qualified to be president, including 23 percent of Trump voters. But the apparent disorganization of the transition does not bode well for the conduct of the Trump administration.

Sure, all transitions are chaotic, but Trump’s, with the post-election purge of Chris Christie and the New Jersey governor’s loyalists, has started in a particularly chaotic manner. The Christie-led group, I’m told, was actually in reasonably good shape. But who needs preparedness when there are scores to settle, on the part of the candidate or his son-in-law?

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