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?
How does comrade Trump pay for this??
Socialist Trump for gov’t paid health care for all.
So arrogant he believes he can actually make socialism work.
Nearly 70% of Americans do NOT WANT socialized medicine. DID YOU NOT HEAR IT OR READ IT MR. TRUMP! Just sub in dictator 0 for dictator Trump. Straw that broke the camel’s back. All the conservative words he speaks are to tickle your ears into voting for him. He has no record for you to look at. So you can’t truly judge the truth of his statements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=29&v=6inQmf96SYQ
It’s a beautiful bridge. In my lower middle-class household, it was considered a treat to drive over it for the first time back in the 60s!
Moses?
Just kidding. :)
I was at Perot's announcement for the '92 run. It was clear then that he never intended to be President. He just hated Bush '41 (some would argue with justification).
Perhaps Trump is running for similar reasons (take out Jeb!) or as a marketing campaign for his brand.
We shall see.
Ha! You beat me to it. Great minds think alike!
It is beautiful. I’ve looked at pictures of before during and after it was constructed. Incredible.
Staten Island went from farm country to little Italy (including me) after that bridge was built :)
My father used to complain in the 70s that he had to pick up grandma and then take her home costing 4 dollars each way :)
Lower middle class growing up too, but we had a lot of fun! :)
Check out #19. LS beat you by less than a minute.
It was a great time. Eventually, my immediate family moved to NJ and we visited all the relatives in Queens before the bridge was built. You had to travel through Manhattan to get there. Quite a haul. I suppose my father was happy when that bridge was finally built - it really cut down on the travel time.
That is not true at all. Back in 2008 I was telling people to shut up about criticizing Hillary. I said we WANT Hillary to get the nomination, because if Obama gets it, the media will have orgasms promoting him. He will rouse every minority of voting age to go out to the polls and vote for him.
White Liberals will crawl over broken glass in an effort to vote for him.
I recognized Obama as the very real danger he turned out to be. As a matter of fact, I was pushing the idea of us (GOP) running a black man in 1996, because I knew he would win by a landslide. We could have taken advantage of that same media "Love Fest" and gotten conservative policy and conservative judiciary enacted with little additional effort. The country would be in a much better place financially, socially, and from a national security perspective.
The Black vote is generally 90-95% Democrat. You get any significant portion of that, and it's a done deal. The Democrats simply cannot win without a near unanimous support of the Black vote. A Black Republican running for President in 1996 would have done this.
Notice that Trump is the only one who’s actually presenting high concept ideas? Others are either too specific or too elusively vague. Trump is showing us how top level managers work. The details are left for the underlings while the manager keeps everybody on focus and pointed in the right direction.
Trump will set the tone and focus of the country. Hopefully we’ll elect him and get U.S first attitude along with the mandate to brow-beat the ridiculous politically correct.
Yes he did. It was called "Operation Chaos". He urged people in open primary states to go to the polls and vote for Hillary. I think Rush realized also that a black candidate would galvanize liberals and minorities and would pose a very great threat.
Unfortunately Obama was already doing the Chicago Mafia style of cheating and intimidation against Democrat primary voters, and I wouldn't doubt that there was a lot of ballot box stuffing as well.
Obama is criminal scum, and he needs to end up in prison.
Yeah, that’s a hike through Manhattan!!
This brought back memories :) Grandma, dad, uncles and aunts, all moved on to be with God.
They were great times, weren’t they?
and we didn’t need fancy gadgets or expensive toys to be happy.
Costs $15 to cross the lovely Verazzano-—NYC extortioners.
19 was a very well thought out response....and I tend to agree with it. I would be interested on your take, and our relevance, on the insider Democrat establishment cronyism and ties that run thru the family, dad and DT.
Nelson Rockefeller ? I don’t think so.
Good post and thoughts. You must be a history professor or something. ;-)
Preparation-H might help with that case of severe red@$$ you’re exhibiting.
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