Donald TrumpHe's the dream, in supersizeBy Margaret Carlson
September 20, 1999
Web posted at: 3:49 p.m. EDT (1949 GMT)
Political candidates spend millions of dollars on consultants who
can sand off the rough edges, buff the family values and come up
with a pretested set of nostrums designed to calm the party
activists in Iowa and New Hampshire. Follow the rules of the
road--never brag, listen to your handlers, hope any controversial
thing you ever wrote was pre-database, drop the idea that honesty
is the best policy--and you might succeed. By these standards,
Donald Trump will be the worst candidate in modern history. As
the man once responsible for Georgia beauty Marla Maples' famous
tabloid headline, BEST SEX I EVER HAD, Trump, who has a new book
out in January, is used to breaking all the rules.
He gloats. He vamps. He prefers the game to the goal. Darwin is
his muse: the Weak must fail. Every thought he has he blurts
out. The theme of his book is that he embodies the American
Dream--indeed he is the American dream--and he never lets go of
that idea. "You can see a long way from the Trump Tower. I'm
having fun making great deals, and I'm living the American
Dream." When he's not having fun, he's a wall of worry that the
American Dream could turn into a nightmare. "View [the American
Dream] another way--toward the future--and I can see thunder and
lightning. And I'm not the only one." What's it going to take to
save the Dream? He's glad you asked. The answer is, A straight
shooter. "Straight shooters are going to rule tomorrow... I'm
going to shoot straight about foreign threats and I'm going to
talk plain about the economy and social issues. My bottom line
is: If a policy threatens the Dream, we need to go after it."
Back from the brink of bankruptcy, Trump speaks as the world's
most successful real estate developer who can save the economy
when it crashes and protect us from terrorism. But, alas, in some
places the potential candidate goes all focus-groupy. He promises
his version of a chicken in every pot: "I'm going to do
everything I can to see that regular Americans can fly as high as
their wings will take them." That would be a seductive idea if we
could all soar as high as the Donald, who can hop on his private
jet and deplane in Palm Beach for his Mar-a-Lago estate. Let's go
along for the ride anyway. It'll be nice and bumpy.
--By
Margaret Carlson
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Cover Date: September 27, 1999
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