U.S. President Donald Trump has a lot on his plate at the moment, not least simmering racial tensions and the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic. However, according to many commentators in the U.S., what is uppermost in his mind is something else entirely: His own reelection.
It seems the November presidential election has been dominating Trump's thinking for some considerable time. As early as June 2, John Bolton, his former national security adviser, told ABC News:
"There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's reelection… He was so focused on the reelection that longer-term considerations fell by the wayside."
Generally, it's quite understandable that a sitting president would aspire to be reelected. However, that should not detract from his ability to perform his duties. The trouble with Trump is that his performance as president was already being criticized, even before his bungled attempts to deal with the coronavirus. As Bolton states in his new book, the tell-all memoir, The Room Where It Happened, the president is "stunningly uninformed" and ignorant of basic facts.
It's impossible to quantify precisely how much damage the president's complacency has done to the fight against COVID-19. But by criticizing his chief epidemic control adviser, openly flouting advice to wear a mask, and championing drugs that health experts warn have no positive impact on coronavirus, he leaves himself open to accusations of putting his ego ahead of the welfare of ordinary Americans.
It doesn't take a cynic to work out that his recent suggestion that the presidential election should be postponed to a time when the coronavirus pandemic was less serious, was less a demonstration of concern for voters' well-being, and more a transparent attempt to prolong his stay in the White House.
Unsurprisingly, the suggestion was widely ridiculed.
"His proposal appeared as impotent as it was predictable – less a stunning assertion of his authority than yet another lament that his political prospects have dimmed amid a global public-health crisis," said The New York Times on July 30.
Rational people might suggest that Donald Trump's best chance of re-election lies in presenting himself, albeit belatedly, as a national statesman leading his people through a time of fear and grief, and inspiring in them the belief that they can soon emerge from the catastrophe under his steady guidance.
Yet, his preoccupation with winning a second term in office at all costs appears to be overriding the need to do something about the chaos he has led his country into.
People are not blind to this.
"This election is in danger of being stolen. By Donald Trump," declared a New York Times columnist on August 2.
"Trump is a win-at-all-costs kind of operator," wrote Charles M. Blow. "For him, the rules are like rubber, not fixed but bendable. All structures – laws, conventions, norms – exist for others, those not slick and sly enough to evade them, those not craven enough to break them."
If there's one positive trait that, perhaps, Donald Trump can teach us, it's self-confidence, although he is surely guilty of taking it to extremes.
So, in the world of Donald Trump, the outcome of the election is almost certainly not in doubt.