So, the whole “transgender issue”, whatever that is seems to be the premier dog whistle and distraction of the age – Trump just made some pronouncement on the topic – which will gin up lots of controversy, which probably means that there is some other more important, probably brand detrimental bit of news that will be coming down the pike soon.  Russia?  Sessions?  Healthcare?

1. From some thought of Tyler Cowen – you can’t be the Court Jester and the King at the same time – the “deep state” – to the degree that it exists, which is a lot – is mostly just filling a vacuum left by Trump not actually doing things (which is probably for the best, but who know)
2. NO ONE is talking about Trumps age (71), seemingly poor health, and direct family history of Alzheimers.  Are we that old of a country, i.e. we’re all so old that some topics are just considered taboo across the political spectrum?
3. Trump’s alienation of the Republican industry members (i.e. the people who are the assistant undersecretaries, etc, who actually know how to do stuff) will haunt him the rest of his term – leading to a lot of things not getting done (yay!).
4. He has spurred the democrats to be an actual opposition party, something they generally do not do well.
5. The Republican congressional majority does not seem to matter much.

The obvious (to me) parallel to the alt-right and trump is Obama’s “palling around with terrorists” in the 2008.  It was a meaningless statement then, and the alt-right angle is meaningless this year, but meaninglessness hasn’t stopped anyone lately.

One unremarked advantage Trump had was the lack of political “infrastructure”, or the hordes of pollsters and consultants that surround candidates.  That let him to push, not necessarily better ideas, but to float a tremendous number of ideas to the public at a rapid clip, keep the popular ones, ditch the unpopular and build a coalition off of what people liked at the time.  All without having to vet everything through interest groups and campaign infrastructure.

Short version – he had a much faster OODA loop for his marketing.

In that sense – I think he will be a role model for other politicians – it’s eerily similar to an Adwords campaign now that I think about it.

Granted, that was 12 years ago, but the appeal still seems the same, light on ideology, high on displays of “social” strength.  I suppose a better way to put it would be that both were irritable strongmen, or “champions” who are rather light on ideology but heavy on irritability.