As the billionaire Trump goes, so go…
But Trump’s rise shows billionaires don’t have to constrain themselves anymore. They can cut out the middleman. It’s the art of the deal on the campaign trail.
And if you’re a billionaire with business sense, a flair for the dramatic and a reality TV background, well, you’re within reach of the nomination.
Whatever else Trump does on the campaign trail this year, his legacy just may be in nudging other billionaires off the sidelines and into politics. Just one billionaire is campaigning in 2016. How many will run in 2020?
And now, right on cue, is Mark Cuban:
In an email exchange with CNBC, Cuban revealed his thoughts on the presidency, how he’d structure his campaign and what it would mean for the nation to have, in his words, a “three-comma POTUS””as in $1,000,000,000.
Asked whether he’d ever run for president, Cuban wrote: “I get asked every day. It’s a fun idea to toss around. If I ran as a Dem, I know I could beat Hillary Clinton. And if it was me vs. Trump, I would crush him. No doubt about it.”
What could possibly go wrong? Aren’t these billionaires free of the taint of being beholden to the big money donors? Isn’t that A Good Thing?
In the abstract, yes. Of course, as I wrote in a joking sort of way here, in the future:
Only multi-billionaires will be able to run for president…?
Oh, that will work out really well.
Does anyone really think that billionaires are less corrupt because they only worry about their own fortune and what might be of benefit to it? I don’t. I agree about the donor problem in general, but I certainly don’t think billionaires are the remedy.
Cuban himself explains the advantages of being so very, very rich, as well as being a media-savvy TV reality star (in Cuban’s case, it’s “Shark Tank”):
To Mark Cuban, all this makes sense. Having a billion dollars””that famous “three-comma” net worth””gives a candidate a certain swagger. “Rich people just have a little more arrogance to think we know more than everyone else,” Cuban wrote.
And just as John F. Kennedy had an instinctive grasp of the new media””television””that was coming to dominate his political era, Cuban thinks that the social media era will play to the strengths of a different group of candidates.
“There is no question the game has changed and Donald has a much stronger command of it than the rest of the candidates,” Cuban wrote. “Most future voters will get their news from their Facebook, Snapchat, Cyber Dust, Instagram, Twitter feeds,” Cuban said (Cyber Dust is his own messaging app). “They open their apps and see what’s there. They don’t go looking for depth and explanations.”
In my original joke I said that in the future, successful candidates would be limited to multi-billionaires. So I’ll add that they will be limited to multi-billionaire reality TV stars who know how to use Twitter and other social media.
Works for me. Idiocracy, here we come!
In the same way as businesses are propelled by profit, IMO running for office is propelled by ego.
This doesn’t mean that there are no altruistic reasons for running for public office, it just means that a primary driving force is ego. Trump, Cuban, both Clintons, Cruz, Walker, Biden and all the rest (especially Obama) have that in common.
Whatever good they may accomplish IMO they serve their own egos first, especially if they’ve been in the public eye for an extended time.
As for billionaires not being beholden to donors, we all need to remember that they didn’t become billionaires by spending their own money, but by investing it in what they identified as a mostly sure thing.
If the choice came down to Cuban or Trump, I’d go with Cuban in a heartbeat.
Omaha’s billionaire, Warren Buffett, will not run.
Bill Clinton won because he knew how to manage an already-sympathetic media. Bush, not so much. He did well with alternet media-managing and was not terrible at legacy media. He won by raising money.
Obama was mostly back to the old Democratic script of managing media, which he is good at, with elements of managing new media, at which he was better by default. (Okay some new silicon tech support was a big help, too.)
If new media technology, which I participate in only at the edges, is going to hold the key to 2016 – and I think it will definitely be the key to 2018 and beyond – then folks like me are just not going to understand intuitively who will own that. Things that look ridiculous to us will seem notmal to the “evanescent media” crowd. Managing the brief but enormous peaks and valleys of popularity and notoriety will be done best by people whose instincts are different.
Here is something to consider. Lots of people have scandals and manage them, or at least can have some sort of career after. Bill Cosby hasn’t even tried. A master at using previous media, he is completely overwhelmed and hasn’t got a popgun to fight back with. That looks entirely deserved, but there are others who deserve it equally and somehow live to fight another day.
The ground has changed.
Eh, Michael Bloomberg got there before Trump, and was similarly a Democrat turned recent “Republican.” I’m sure that are many others.
IIRC, Mark Cuban made that atrocious movie about US soldiers raping an Iraqi that so inflamed the ME – clips of it were portrayed as footage of an actual crime. Don’t know much else about him, but that’s not making me interested to learn more.
Does anyone really think that billionaires are less corrupt because they only worry about their own fortune and what might be of benefit to it?
anyone here actually know any? i have met three and my first girlfriend was worth over 40 million…
so far no one says anything that is true about them that i have ever saw… but it sounds great to the ignorati…
Ever thought that a man or woman with a billion dollars CANT be bribed neo? your statement sure show you still live steeped in the knowlege the left gave you and not sorted out yet…
you let me know what you or someone else would bribe them with? sex? already on tap… money? more than anyoen can give them…. free travel miles? they get more on a black card than you will see in your life…
there is NOTHING you can bribe them with… duh
the ones that ARE nasty are not bribable either, they just are willing to play dirty for fun… ie. being bad and scoring high is more fun to them than being honest and scoring honestly…
but those are the kind that cant run for office
you cant bribe them, but you can get the roach versions to run for cover as the more in public they are the more they can get outed if not the cleaner honest ones… and there are plenty of those actually…
there is a whole bunch of them that play honest, but agressive, following the rules to the ltter which can be brutal… i used to travel with a guy that did things a bit like marcus lemonis before anyone knew who he was… brutal honesty, which can be a lot more painful than being cheated.
the vast majority of such mae their money in their lifetimes… the ones that made it young tend to be dirty cuase of their guilt than the older ones that made it slower. but the buffets and soros and steyers are dirty players who collude. they do have an opposition camp that HATES to see them ruin others chances…
One of the reasons, I think, that people voted for Arnold was because he was so rich, he didn’t have to be beholden to anyone, either in Sacto or out. But he went to Sacramento, and it was SSDD. Which I think taught those Californians who paid attention a lesson.
Artfldr:
Once again, you are misunderstanding what I am saying.
I never said they could be bribed with MONEY in the same way a person of more ordinary financial means could. My point was that the possession of great wealth hardly precludes corruption or rot of other kinds, or of looking out for their own interests rather than those of their country.
I don’t know that Biden is guilty of feeding his ego – or at least not as much – as the other you mention. This article speaks to the human side of Biden – something that will be a distinguishing factor should he decide to enter the race. I’ve got money that he does.
Better America’s billions than Clinton’s Chinese billions, or Obama’s Muslim billions.
When the billionaires came to Obambi.
Iconic picture of the proceedings.
Don’t look too smart as of today do they? Bamboozled!
Eff them ♪ all, eff them all, and the long ♪ and ♫ the tall and the short ♫…
There Will Be Bamboozling!
Excruciating!
If there’s a bigger jerk than Trump, that would be Cuban. God help us.
}}} “They open their apps and see what’s there. They don’t go looking for depth and explanations.”
Well, the LIVs on the Right are certainly the ones driving Trump.
I didn’t think there were that many, but it’s another example of the death of a society due to pure democracy, for sure.
When you don’t have to show any sense to have a say, then you bring the whole thing down with nonsense.
Anyone who supports Trump is an abject imbecile, and I’m ready to defend that with the facts.
}}} If there’s a bigger jerk than Trump, that would be Cuban. God help us.
Nah. Cuban is better than Trump. Trump is nothing but pure pandering. Cuban has at least a semblance of his own viewpoint that he wants to promote to others.
Doesn’t matter who supports Trump or not, because the US democracy doesn’t exist and elections don’t matter as to the outcome of this war.
http://neoneocon.com/2012/03/17/those-wild-and-crazy-republicansconservative/
Some good back and forth discussions on the topic of the Death of the Republic back then in the comments.
Well, most people have no clue as to the sheer level of the danger and the power of the Left, but I don’t expect them to. That’s what the Left is good for, convincing lost sheep.