Clearly, one of the major issues of the presidential general election — which barring some unforeseen development will be between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton — is whether Trump has the temperament to hold down the job.
Clinton, in one of her more effective speeches of this campaign season, on Thursday tore into Trump for being so thin-skinned and volatile — not exactly the qualities this country should want in a person who has the power to send U.S. men and women into war, not to mention launch a nuclear strike that could annihilate the planet.
Separately from Clinton’s broadside, USA Today this week published a comprehensive analysis of Trump’s litigious proclivities, again questioning whether a President Trump would be so adversarial by nature that he would be unable to get much done. While brute force and lawyering up might work fine in the private sector, they don’t usually get much done in a divided government, which is constitutionally created to keep any chief executive from wielding too much power.
In a story headlined “Trump: litigator in chief,” USA Today reported that over the past three decades, Trump and his businesses have been either the plaintiff or the defendant in at least 3,500 legal actions. Not only is that unprecedented for a presidential nominee, but it’s also highly unusual for a business executive. The newspaper compared Trump’s “caseload” to those of five other top real estate development executives. His total was higher than the other five’s numbers combined.
Granted, almost half of the Trump lawsuits were relatively mundane debt-collection efforts — actions against gamblers at Trump-owned casinos who allegedly failed to pay up. But a bunch were also cases in which Trump was sued over his past bankruptcies as well as other unflattering allegations, including the ongoing class-action case in which plaintiffs claim they were swindled by his Trump University.
Any active cases won’t go away if he is in the White House. Presidents don’t get immunity from civil lawsuits over actions that occurred before they were elected — meaning, Trump would have a lot of distractions about his businesses, and possibly be called in to testify, even while he is supposed to be concentrating all of his energies on the domestic and foreign affairs of this nation.
Then, you have the whole issue of style. Trump, who says he never settles lawsuits (another lie from a serial liar, since USA Today found at least 100 cases that were, in fact, settled), Trump has used the courts to try to force less wealthy individuals into submission. Will a bully with a hair-trigger temper be able to get much done with Congress or with foreign powers? Not likely.
Of course, Trump will respond to all of these doubts about his fitness for the office with his typical bluster, and his devotees will continue to eat up his “in your face” style. But those who think seriously and objectively about the type of temperament it takes to head this nation should be gravely concerned about turning the keys to the White House over to him.
