Tom Suozzi

Trump is no politician, and that's not so good

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Donald Trump once wrote me a note inside the front cover of one of his books. “To Tom,” it said. “I don’t know much about politics, but I do know real estate. Hope you like my ideas. Good luck! Donald.”

In case you haven’t noticed, Trump really isn’t a politician. Most people today would think that’s a compliment, but I don’t intend it as one, nor as an insult. It’s more a matter of fact.

To be president, to get things done in Washington and on the world stage, you need to be a politician.

I still believe that politics is a noble profession. I know that to be effective, politically and governmentally, requires skill. It requires experience. It requires a knowledge of how both politics and government work, and of how to get things done in a complex world with competing interests and mind-numbing bureaucracy.

In this space I’ve written about how Barack Obama’s lack of political and governmental experience before he became president made it difficult for him to get things done. I have extolled Hillary Clinton’s experience in both politics and government, and explained why I believe she’ll be the most effective person to solve problems in the world and here at home.

Trump is a real estate developer, a master promoter and marketer, a reality TV star. He is very smart and very entertaining. He is not politically correct.

He would not make a good president.

Politics and politicians have a bad reputation these days, and much of it is well deserved. I believe the main reason we see so much failure in politics today is that people don’t participate. They don’t vote in primaries, and they’re not very well-informed. People these days are so busy with their own lives — their families, their bills and all the information they’re bombarded with on television and the Internet and other stimuli — that they simply don’t have the bandwidth to participate in politics.

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