Posted on 09/29/2015 5:14:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
In November 1964 a crowd of 5,000 attended the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, then the longest suspension bridge in the world. Presiding were New York Mayor Robert Wagner, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and transportation and parks czar Robert Moses. Also in the crowd was a teenager named Donald Trump.
Trump later told a New York Times reporter that he remembered that on that occasion no one mentioned the name of 85-year-old Othmar Ammann, designer of New York's famous bridges for more than 50 years. "I realized then and there that if you let people treat you how they want, you'll be made a fool," he told the Times. "I don't want to be anyone's sucker."
That helps explain why Trump has plastered his name on his hotels and private airliner. But it also raises this question: What was Donald Trump, an 18-year-old Fordham freshman, doing in a select crowd of celebrities?
The answer is that Trump's entire life has been marinated in politics. His father, Fred Trump, made millions building apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. It didn't hurt, when it came to land assembly and public subsidies, that he was a key supporter of Brooklyn machine Democrats and a close friend and ally of Abraham Beame, city comptroller in 1964 and later mayor.
A decade later Donald Trump, at 28, basically took over the family business and focused it elsewhere. New York City, plagued by violent crime and high taxes, lost 1 million people in the 1970s. Building apartments in the outer boroughs was looking like a sucker's game. Getting a toehold in Manhattan at the market's trough, to profit when it glittered again, looked like -- and was -- a winner.
It helped that Beame was elected mayor in 1973 and that Hugh Carey, for whom the Trump family provided major financial backing when he was an underdog in the primary, was elected governor in 1974. Donald Trump wangled a stake in the Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central Station using, as big developers do, OPM (other people's money) with key assists from the Beame and Carey administrations.
Trump's lavish self-praise and wild unpredictability, masking his long developed political acumen, makes him seem a unique political figure in American history. But maybe not completely unique.
Newt Gingrich compares him to Andrew Jackson, rich and smarter than generally thought, but regarded as a dangerous wild man by his predecessors Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. They were justifiably worried: President Jackson abolished the Bank of the United States, which the latter two supported, and, with the Indian Removal Act, ruthlessly shipped Native Americans West in a way Jefferson, Madison and Monroe never contemplated.
Another comparison is to Huey Long, the Louisiana governor and senator whose "Every Man a King" became a national bestseller. Franklin Roosevelt regarded him as a dangerous, possibly fascist rival. New Deal historians say FDR supported redistributionist taxes and Social Security to outflank him.
Long was a brilliant man who built a Mississippi River bridge, a state capitol and Louisiana State University in just months' time. It would be tantalizing to know what voters at the time thought of him. Unfortunately, he was murdered in September 1935, a month before Dr. Gallup conducted the first random sample scientific poll.
I submit another as Trump's precedent, a man on that podium in November 1964: Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller was considered an establishment Republican, but he operated entirely, as the title of Richard Norton Smith's magisterial and compelling biography of him says, "On His Own Terms."
He was sometimes lavishly liberal (his Medicaid program spent one-quarter of national funds), sometimes harshly conservative (mandatory sentences for drug offenses). He spent enormous sums building Albany's Capitol Mall and a state university system intended to rival California's. He raised taxes so much that someone said he spends the people's money as if it were his own.
Rockefeller was richer than Trump, a more gifted art and architecture patron and less given to boasting. He had a much longer public career, from running FDR's Latin American desk to being Gerald Ford's vice president. But through all that, he was regarded by insiders as an unguided missile, not subject to institutional constraint, seeking power to do whatever he wanted. Rockefeller was elected governor when Donald Trump was 12 and served until Trump was 27 and about to make his jump to Manhattan.
On that day at the bridge opening in 1964, did that 18-year-old freshman see a role model on the dais?
You idiot, he gave us Bubba.
Closest parallel is likely Ross Perot.
If he had been sane he would have been elected in ‘92.
I hit it by accident every once in a while, and b) only for six more months til I retire :)
Lets hear Trumps Plan for “Single Payer” Insurance before we consign it to Some Socialist Sweaden Plan—Hillary/Romney Healthcare. Lets see the true nuts and bolts of “Trumpcare” before we dump it. I will give him that—Like the Tax Plan—like the Wall and shipping out illegals, Lets see his health care ideas before we brand it a Democrat/Progressive/Stalist ideal.
p.s. were you really a rock band drummer for an opening act to Steppenwolf?!
Others that come to mind are Lyndon LaRouche, John McCain and Bob Backlund.
You can hear two of our songs on the "Rockin' the Wall" soundtrack---two very good ones. "Rampage."
My future plans include winning a Pulitzer and writing a history of media bias in the United States.
I will pay to read that book!
I would not propose any "take" I have could be as well thought out historically as that of LS or even yourself, both of you being accomplished historians and authors in your own right. But I will be happy to offer you my humble opinion...
I like Trump for his willingness to get out in front of the parade and lead it. He is saying things which need to be said and smashing all sorts of Liberal icons while doing it. The main reason he is able to do this effectively (while other politicians are unable) is precisely because he is himself an icon of the media and successful in the system and has a proven record of accomplishment of surmounting obstacles personally, politically, and financially most could or would not. Having a nice jump start in New York from his family business did not hurt at all.
Raised and living in New York, Trump is very much a product and to a great extent in tow to the Liberal and moneyed establishment which exists there. His father was very successful navigating it as is he. One doesn't become financially successful in a place like New York unless he "plays the game" and especially if it requires constant politician approval - which major real estate development does whether you are in New York or Shanghai. That means giving political and social obeisance (and usually money) to the "right" politicians and interests when required (like the unions and media) and Trump is a master at that. He freely admits it.
That said, he has decided to step outside the box and put much of his financial and social career on the line by opposing just those political forces he habitually kow-tows to. That does take a lot of guts. Apparently Trump has decided sucking up to the likes of political hacks like Abe Beame, Hugh Carey, and the Cuomo Clan has become less important than saving American as a viable entity where he and others can continue to flourish financially and with at least a modicum of personal freedom. Of course, it is his benefactors and past admirers who are quickly ruining the country in their quests for ever more power and wealth.
I think Trump is probably a genuine patriot. His time at NYMA probably cemented that in his youth. My problem with him is I have hardly ever heard him reference the Constitution or pin his goals to the promotion of the liberty and freedom which it represents. "Making America Great Again" is not the same thing as preserving the lodestone and vision of our Constitutional Republic. Perhaps he means the same thing - but a man like Ted Cruz (whom I wholeheartedly support) is one who keeps that vision foremost in his mind and not on some back burner, like Trump seems to do.
That said, I could support Trump as the best alternative if it comes down to that. Going down the same-old same-old road with the Democrats (and whomever they decide to nominate for the next dictator of America) and their worthless GOP-e lickspittles is a losing game.
At least with Trump, there may be a chance we can pull off a Restoration at least partially. With the Liberals/Progressives/Socialists/Communists there is none for most of us who love freedom and liberty and yearn for an America God can once again bless rather than forsake and curse and a country in which we average citizens can pursue our own dreams and once again be proud of.
I agree with everything - especially the good things - but your justification for Trump’s crony ties to liberal politicians give me some heartburn. Yeah, I get it, he’s from NY and he gamed the system. Fine. I understand why. I just don’t buy a crony as the solution to cronyism.
Everything else I agree with.
That book is done. The story is that I wrote much of it, based on a hypothesis I had that the media went far left after the JFK assassination. Eventually, while I worked with Jim Kuypers of VA Tech on that, I decided to let him have whatever I already had done and to build on it. I did write the foreword for the book, called “Partisan Journalism” from Rowman and Littlefield.
Parallel to Trump? Silvio Berlusconi comes to mind.
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Yes!
Teddy Roosevelt steered Wilson into office by dividing the vote, and Ross Perot did the same for Bill Clinton.
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>> “We who have run businesses can at least do things better than the idiots who never worked for a living.” <<
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A thought that anyone who has run a business, or even tried to, can echo.
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Ever hear of the Rockefeller family?
I agree Trump is way down among my last choices, maybe ahead of Pataki, Graham, Bush, Kasich, and Christie who either can't or won't do anything and are compromised in their own ways.
Trump would be far from my first choice. No doubt he is a crony and has profited well from it for years. So, at least, are the previous five beholden to their own peculiar ideologies or interests. And no, Trump may not be the "solution". It might only suffice as a stop gap on the way to a solution. It "might" but it would still be a long shot, IMHO.
Pristine wells aren't produced from polluted springs. But we are stuck with the choices we have. We do have a few better choices which we should endeavor mightily to take first. But it makes no sense delivering ourselves directly into the hands of our enemies without fighting with everything at our disposal and Trump happens to be one of the clubs in our arsenal.
post 57, gotcha....nothing to disagree with in there.
Jeb’s glass jaw is far more fragile than Bush 41’s.
I can think of a number of bombastic “leaders” who came to power then the “people were in abject AGONY...
none it the USA quite yet
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