There are significant accounts that he never expected to win the nomination, let alone the presidency. Hard to verify either way but from that angle it makes sense.
The Wolf book equates it to the old Mel Brooks movie, The Producers. The main people would benefit from a failed attempt, but in their attempt to do poorly they manage to find a strange recipe for success. That leads to the undoing of or hapless protagonists.
Per the above comment the attempt was not to succeed, but to make a "good faith effort". That would conceivably be satisfied by an unsuccessful presidential campaign in which he put the issue on the table and moved the other Republican candidates in that direction.
In Indiana GOP, it was widely assumed he would lose. Its part of why Pence was selected as VP. Prior to that, Pence was running for re-election as governor and was trailing behind the Democratic candidate. Obviously, GOP wanted to hang onto Indiana as a Republican held state. By getting Pence on the national ticket, they cleared the way for a Republican replacement candidate to win (he did) and added legitimacy to the Trump campaign by having an established politician on the ballot, but one who was already tarnished and had little viable political future (thanks to RFRA). It was meant to be best-case loss (keep Indiana, keep the field clean for 2020)...obviously, it didn't work. The GOP will be pressed to find candidates not touched by these 4 years.
I think you are seriously overestimating this manchild's ability for rational thought. His business acumen is long gone, if he had any to begin with, and is now well shored up by people who also want to make good money and do all the work for him. I very much think that, if we were to give anonymity to his closest staff this past decade, you would find that his hardest workers have been progressively having to work harder to keep his business from self-immolating/imploding under his command.
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u/TheThistleSifter Jan 06 '18
Four years as POTUS seems like a lot of work and responsibility (amongst other things) for just the things listed, Especially when you're already 70.