Cleveland: Where the Trump Campaign Went to Die

[Purveyor]

JULY 21, 2016 10:16 AM EDT
By Francis Wilkinson

Conventions have multiple purposes, but the part that is televised in prime time has only one: to reinforce the themes and competitive advantages of the presidential candidate. That requires highlighting his strengths, minimizing his weaknesses and damaging his opponent. Three days of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland have produced a slightly different effect, leaving the rationales for Donald Trump's candidacy in tatters.

Consider.

Trump the CEO. Trump's never been much of a manager, as my Trump-authority colleague Tim O'Brien just made clear. And experts often explain that running the federal government is nothing like running a company -- especially a family company like Trump's. Oddly enough, a convention sort of is. It's entirely your show. You set the schedule, pick the speakers and, in all but exceptional cases, precisely vet what they say. (You don't, however, get to pick its location. Trump seems to have lied about that for no particular reason other than that's how he rolls.)

CEO Trump's convention has been a fiasco. Incompetence is everywhere. Seats throughout the arena are empty in prime time. The schedule has run late, causing key speakers to miss valuable television slots. The arena's video monitor fritzed out on Wednesday night. And, of course, there was the epic plagiarism in Melania Trump's speech. The series of blatant untruths the campaign produced to try to quell the controversy was amateurish even for this group. Worse, the speech plagiarized Michelle Obama of all people. Worse again, it plagiarized a passage on the Obama family values -- which Donald Trump had gone to great lengths to portray as alien and un-American. ("There's something going on there.&quot

Takeaway: If Trump can't run his own convention, how can he run anything more complex? Like a large country?

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-21/cleveland-where-the-trump-campaign-went-to-die

[Thinkingabout]

1. I have questioned Trumps reasoning for running, don't think he really wants

The job. He is proving an ameratuer is not prepared to run without a good strong team behind him and he does not have the talent to run a campaign.