Via WashingtonPost.com - In the countdown to Inauguration Day, the guessing game over the presidency of Donald Trump continues. But there is one reality about the man who will become the 45th president on Friday. The Trump presidency will be a mold breaker. The question is whether he can run a successful presidency the same way he ran his campaign.
In almost all ways, the president-elect is breaking the conventions of presidential style. Given what happened in the campaign, this should hardly be a surprise, for Trump didn’t win the election by promising to continue past practices. In other words, always expect the unexpected.
His campaign was notable for the ways in which he eschewed what political professionals would have told him to do. He ran a lean operation in the primaries, insulted his rivals and others, thrived on controversy, ran few television ads throughout, adopted an unorthodox approach to debate preparation, embraced no consistent ideology, and on and on.
His supporters didn’t embrace him because they want continuity or business as usual in Washington. To the most passionate of his backers, the ways of Washington are stacked against them. They are tired of what they regard as an insiders’ game.
They found an unlikely champion in a billionaire developer who speaks a language they understand, rather than the political boilerplate generated from focus groups or messages that have been poll-tested and refined. Throughout the transition, Trump has given every indication he intends to remain true to the style that got him this far.
Less than a week before he’s sworn in, Trump continues to shock and offend. He remains determined to litigate through Twitter and other means every grievance and slight, no matter whether large or small, presidential or not. He always wants the last word.
At the beginning of last week, he couldn’t resist attacking Meryl Streep after she attacked him during the Golden Globes. He called her “overrated.”
On Friday, as part of a morning tweet storm, Trump again attacked his defeated rival, Hillary Clinton, calling her “guilty as hell” for using a private email server as secretary of state. Was this his response to the news that the FBI would conduct an internal review of Director James B. Comey’s controversial handling of the email investigation? (ontinueReading
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