DONALD – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:05 A.M. ET:  I can't deny my concern at the rise of Donald Trump.  Yes, he can be refreshing.  Yes, he's raised some important issues.  Yes, he's entertaining.  But the fact is that his ego is out of control, and he is not the kind of man we'd want representing the United States.

Yes, he'd be tough in negotiations, something desperately needed in American foreign policy right now.  But Ronald Reagan was tough in negotiations, extremely tough at times, without coming off as an adolescent bully.  Trump must understand that negotiating with Moscow or Tehran is not the same as negotiating with the electricians union. 

John Fund, one of the best political reporters around, gives an assessment of Trump, and it isn't pretty.  From NRO:   

Someone who is so thin-skinned that he can’t move on from a slight. Someone who refuses to accept reality and then act accordingly. Someone who has a form of attention-deficit disorder, in which he constantly craves attention. Someone who is constantly boasting about past glories, like an ROTC officer describing his last weekend-warrior experience. Someone who can’t control his language and constantly belittles and bullies everyone he doesn’t like by flinging insults such as “loser,” “stupid,” “worthless,” “fat,” and “slob.”

And...

The closest model for him I can think of is Douglas C. Neidermeyer, the bullying ROTC student leader in the 1978 classic college film Animal House.

We might learn a lesson from how the Delta Tau Chi fraternity dealt with Neidermeyer in Animal House. They never granted him the aura of authority he claimed, they constantly ridiculed his pomposity, and they provided him with opportunities to self-destruct. No matter how isolated in his own reality Donald Trump is, the outside world will eventually bring him down to earth.

COMMENT:  I think that's right.  My fear, though, is that Trump may well run as an independent candidate in 2016, making it virtually impossible for a Republican to be elected.  He won't care.  He'll just tell us that the Republican Party is unfit to govern, and convince himself that he's performed a public service.  Or, he'll really believe that he can be elected.

President Eisenhower was instrumental in bringing down Joe McCarthy by exposing Joe's antics to the public through the Army-McCarthy hearings.  McCarthy was ultimately proved right on many things, but his methods and personality hurt his own cause.  The same is true of Trump, and I hope the public will realize it.

August 10,  2015