Who’s Most Eager to See Trump’s Job Creation Plan? Political Consultants

I’m inclined to think that Donald Trump’s flirtation with the Republican presidential primary is a goof, something he’s doing for fun and because he’s a megalomaniac but that at some point in the next few months he’ll realize not that that he’s a ridiculous human being but that it’s ridiculous for him to run for president. If you’re Donald Trump, you get to rake in tons of money and you’re barely accountable to others, and nothing much bothers you because you’re largely immune to consequences and untroubled by self-awareness.  As president, you have to coddle and cajole others, and you have to actually try to sublimate your own dominate personality traits to appeal to swing voters, a group of folks that includes quite a proportion of fickle and capricious people.

One thing, though, that works in favor of Trump running is that there are probably quite a few people out there who want him to run: political consultants who see Trump’s tremendous wealth and imagine him to be the second coming of Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, you may remember, employed a campaign strategy of trying to hire not just every top Republican consultant whose worked in NYC politics, but pretty much every consultant of any affiliation who’d ever had a connecting flight through LaGuardia. The idea was to hire everyone with any ability and experience so his Democratic rivals would struggle to mount a competent campaign:

As one prominent Democrat put it, “I think he wants to hire anyone with a pulse and totally clear the field.”

I’m not persuaded it’s a particularly sound strategy; frankly, many of the people hired by Bloomberg were the kinds of consultants who regularly advise Democrats to be crappy, milquetoast centrists.  But effective or not, it’s a strategy that can only be employed in a big race by billionaires.

Which leads to Trump. Most consultants are fairly committed partisans, and I imagine most serious operatives think Trump is a joke and wouldn’t want to be associated with him or be dependent on such a impulsive, egotistical prick who doesn’t need anyone’s money and could be inclined to exercise complete control over everything. But what about the less principled or ideologically committed Republicans and the Dick Morris-wannabes unfettered by any sense of principles or partisan loyalty? I’ll bet many of them are wearing out their iPhones and Blackberries trying to get through to whomever it is that’s advising Trump and seeking an audience with the Donald and his top courtiers so they can exclaim that he’s dreamy and exciting and America wants him and if he just hires them to advise and provide services to his campaign that he’ll become president. And since Trump is such a megalomaniac, they just may be able to convince him he should start throwing around his money in the Republican primaries.