Along with Jeffrey Lord I have been saying for over a year that Donald Trump should be taken very seriously as a candidate for president. He is affable, intelligent, accomplished, even amusing. Moreover, as he would say, he is a high-energy candidate. He has performed stupendously on the campaign trail and in the debates. He will approach the convention with more votes than anyone else. Then the man who wrote The Art of the Deal will be looking for a deal. The deal will have to be plausible and constructive. What will it be? Well, allow me to offer a suggestion.
Break the logjam by choosing his vice president before the convention from the field that appeared on stage with him this past week. Every one of them would be vastly more acceptable than any Democrat who appeared at the Democratic debate or for that matter any Democrat who failed to appear at the debate. For instance, John Kasich would make a fine vice presidential candidate, and he comes from a swing state where he won the governorship with 64 percent of the vote. He has superior executive experience and experience as a congressman too. Then Donald can promise to run for just one term, whereupon he would turn over his office to his vice president and depart for Harvard’s Kennedy School to teach a whole generation of young people politics and the art of the deal.
I think it ought not to take Donald more than four years to make good on his promised wall across the southwest. Then there is his promise to end illegal immigration, get the economy going again, reform the tax code, renegotiate trade deals, fix the Veterans Administration, and rebuild the military. His life experience suggests can achieve it all in one term. Then, Donald, hand over your presidency to Kasich, who will institutionalize the Trump Triumph.