When Trump's bid for the Republican candidacy first started to gain traction, I meant to write that he reminded of nothing so much as the sort of old-style London cabbie who's addicted to sliding his window back in order to share trenchant opinions on current events: "Know what I fink vey should do? Vey should..." etc. Apart from the extremely rare occasions when the ranter turned out to be a brutal class war communist, I never minded listening to these tirades, because I usually found myself in agreement with the driver's sentiments (though, unlike them, I never felt any desire personally to wield the electrodes, the hangman's noose, or the shotgun whose use was being enthusiastically advocated). While sharing the anger of cab drivers on many issues, and while agreeing with some of their suggested solutions (I balk at the idea of removing wrongdoers' sexual organs in order to teach them a lesson they won't forget) I've never much fancied the idea of any of them being prime minister - or home secretary, which I suspect would be their preferred role.
To be fair, I don't think that my being in charge of any major government department would be a good idea, either. And that's my main problem with Donald Trump. It would be like having a mouthy cabbie - or me - in the White House, only without any charm, or self-doubt, but with lashings of nauseating boastfulness thrown in (okay, he's rich, but someone worked out that if he'd simply invested his daddy's money in shares, he'd be worth even more than he is now). And I doubt if we'd be doing cruel impressions in public of a disabled journalist or suggesting that a conservative female TV journalist had only asked difficult questions because she was menstruating. Yes, Lyndon Johnson did once suggest that Gerald Ford was so thick that he couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time - but he did so in private. At last night's Republican presidential candidates debate (from which Trump had absented himself), Ted Cruz neatly satirised his main rival's recourse to crude, bullying insults: "I'm a maniac. And everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly. And Ben [Carson], you're a terrible surgeon. Now that we've got the Donald Trump portion out of the way..."
Yes, Americans are angry - and, after seven years of the appalling Obama, who can blame them? But I sincerely hope they're not so enraged that they wind up voting for Trump: they'd be better of calling for a London cabbie - in the unlikely event they can find one who was born in America.
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