President Trump!!?? What Does This Mean for Our Immigration System (Part 1)

President Trump’s (I can’t believe I just wrote that) anti-immigration rhetoric has been a staple and at times the foundation of his unprecedented rise to President. From his promise to build a wall to his proposed ban on Muslims, his extreme rhetoric appealed to and rallied at historic levels his core supporters. So now the question becomes, to what extent will he pass policy in line with this rhetoric.

I believe there are several factors that suggest his policy will be much less extreme than his rhetoric.

• First, let’s remember that our Constitution is an extremely well-constructed document in terms of power distribution and the ability of each government institution to check and balance the other. For these reasons, our President is in many ways much less powerful than perceived.

• Second, has there ever been a candidate more likely NOT TO DELIVER on his myriad of campaign promises than Donald Trump? Have we ever had a candidate so unmoored from the truth and facts as Donald Trump? A candidate that so consistently and unabashedly contradicts his past positions? The bottom line is, who knows what Trump really wants to do. All we know is that he enjoyed rallying a large segment of our population, but his reasons for this is still to be determined. Was it pure narcissism? A novel new reality TV show? Who saw his demeanor this morning and wondered why he was not a little more enthusiastic. I still question whether he ever thought he could win, and more importantly, whether he actually ever wanted to win. This may have been an elaborate Trump brand building campaign that was much more successful than ever intended.

• Third, we have never before elected a President who has never served in public office or the military. While admittedly this was perhaps his most appealing characteristic to his supporters, logic and experience suggest that this is really not a good thing. President Obama struggled to build coalitions and pass new legislation early in his term for the same reasons, and President Obama had far more experience than Trump. Even Trump’s business experience has been highly scrutinized as to whether by any metric he should be deemed successful. His greatest business skill appears to be leveraging large projects with a great deal of debt and then taking advantage of our bankruptcy laws when the projects go south. How will that translate to the Presidency? Perhaps his only undeniable success is the celebratory brand he has built, first though his business (having the audacity to brand all of his commercial real estate projects with his own name) and then building this brand through reality TV. I simply do not see the connection with that skillset and a successful Presidency (beyond getting elected). With such a dearth of any relevant experience for the job, perhaps Trump will simply be the most ineffectual President of all time, which I would prefer to Trump actually passing draconian legislation aligned with his rhetoric.

[This Post is somewhat cathartic and a view from 30,000 feet. See Part 2 for practical implications and predictions regarding our immigration system.]