Comment by mkleczek
15 days ago
There are two issues with this thinking:
1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.
(1) is you not liking it, not that it isn't the case. Whether it is authoritarian or not is besides the point. (2) I am not claiming that they can "outsmart" anyone, just that the objective and plan may not be publicly or explicitly stated, or even that what is publicly stated is not the real objective (this is not "4D chess" this is actually how things tend to be in practice from politics to business).
(1) Bypassing the judicative branch is authoritarian.
(2) You just claimed trump has access to smart advisors and some hidden masterplan but you ignore all counter indication. He ousts critical journalists, nominates incompetent staff, invasion-mongers, tweets and plays golf alot.
If i can see any common factor in his insanity, its the need to have an enemy to pose as the strong man against, which indicates that trump does not have a constructive vision for the US.
> Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
That's 100% not true. A candidate leader might tell you what they're going to do, and then you elect the leader, and then they do them, but they don't propose plans once in power to see if the electorate like them.
As much as I'm not a Trump fan, I really don't like that people use a separate yardstick to measure him vs people they like.
There is a fine line between democratic leadership and authoritarianism.
Public consultations and transparency are two crucial and lately very under appreciated parts of democracy.
If a leader cheats the voters it is no longer democracy.
Possibly, but the thing I have repeatedly heard is "Trump is doing this because he promised it on the campaign trail". The things might be bad (e.g. some pardon didn't sound great) but I wouldn't describe him as not fulfilling anything. He seems to have made some very specific promises, and has kept at least some of them.
Maybe there's a website that keeps track somewhere.