I have publicly noted that I am supporting Ted Cruz for the GOP nomination but I do think Rubio did a better job of battling the Fan Trump Menace (almost a Star Wars pun) at the debate the other night. The media believes that this Trump retort was effective:

“No, I’m the only one on this stage that’s hired people. You haven’t hired anybody. You’ve had nothing but problems, with your credit cards, et cetera. Don’t tell me about problems. You haven’t hired one person in your life.”

That is not exactly accurate. All candidates hire campaign staff and if elected, must hire Congressional or executive staff, so in a sense they have “hired” people. They haven’t hired tens of thousands of people -but neither has Trump he has hired people who hire people.

If I was Rubio or Cruz, I would have asked the Donald how many bills he had authored, how many national security meetings he has attended or how many Senate votes he has cast. Rubio and Criz both have public records that can alternately be attacked or praised, Trump has no such record. As a matter of fact, he has been hiding much of his record – all we really know at this point is what Trump himself says about it. I can’t believe so many in the media didn’t know about his Trump University fraud trial or his brushes with hiring illegal aliens to work on his projects – these are things I knew and wrote about months ago and I have no researchers or beat reporters. My only conclusion is that the major media was holding these in reserve to bring out AFTER he was nominated when it could help Hillary the most.

But back to Trump’s assertion about hiring…I think he unintentionally raised something else that should be examined. He actually made a good point about selecting a candidate for president.

Trump is being touted as a number of things, but they all go back to one proposition – that he is a fighter for the “little guy”, a hero of the common man. There is a lot of projection based on fairy dust and wishful thinking about all the things he is going to do after he is elected. When I hear all that balderdash, I think of my own experiences over the past 30 some odd years in hiring people.

When I hire someone for a job, I have no idea what they WILL do. What I do know through their resumes and through background and reference checks is what the HAVE done. If they have been successful and have progressed their career, all I know is that they have the potential to continue to do so, to possibly succeed in the role I need filled – but I also know nothing is guaranteed. Once exposed to different situations, challenges and people, there are often new strengths that are made evident, but at the same time there are also new weaknesses that can come to the surface and sometimes those weaknesses are critical flaws that can end the employment.

I have made great hires and good hires – but I have also made terrible hires. I have hired wonderful people who were not right for the job simply because they sold themselves so well that they convinced me they were the right person. It happens – one tries to minimize it but sometimes we make mistakes.

When I hear that President Trump will fight for “us”, I immediately think of Peggy Joseph, who, after Obama’s election in 2008, thought he was going to pay her mortgage, her car payments and her gas bill. He didn’t and never was going to but his rhetoric and his resume as a “community organizer” convinced her that the messiah had come. She neglected the evidence that all of Obama’s actions were resume enhancers – a means to an end – his climb up the political ladder.

Trump supporters sound remarkably like the November 5th, 2008 version of dear old Peggy.

Even a look at his foundation shows a pretty tight-fisted approach to charity. Trump has a lot of people convinced that he is a warrior for the common man yet records show that while he claims to have made billions, between the years of 1990 and 2009, he contributed a paltry $3.7 million to his own charitable foundation. Over that same period, World Wrestling Entertainment donated $5 million. Total disbursements from the Trump Foundation – a little over $6.7 million over 20 years, earning him the title of the “Least Charitable Billionaire in the World.”

Neither Trump’s history or resume includes a lot of “fighting for the little guy”. For every Betsy Sharp (family he reportedly helped fight off foreclosure of their family farm) he has helped, there seems to be a Vera Coking (his eminent domain target) he has gone after to offset his “philanthropy.” His history is about fighting for the “deal” and himself and if the “little guy” tangentially benefits, so be it.

History is not an absolute predictor but it is also something we ignore at our peril.

Let’s not be the 2016 version of the disappointed Peggy Joseph.