[kharms]

[Presumably] There is a massive volume of information that one gains access to when one is elected President. It would (and does) scare me that President Trump seems to be entirely unaffected by the realities of his new position.

[ykler]

I really doubt it. Sure one learns details, but all the evidence points to there being no game-changing secrets that the hoi polloi are not privy to. That said, perhaps when you become president people close to you try to see to it that gaps in your knowledge are filled, and Trump may have had especially many.

[krapp]

> Sure one learns details, but all the evidence points to there being no game-changing secrets that the hoi polloi are not privy to.

All of what evidence?

And, for that matter, what "hoi polloi?" Surely you're not implying that every wealthy person in the US is fully aware of every US government secret and classified operation.

[ykler]

"Hoi polloi" was an ill-chosen term since of course wealthy people are included in those who do not know the secrets one learns on becoming president.

As for the evidence, one thing is that there have never really been any leaks about game-changing secrets. The closest thing to that, at least in recent memory, is the Snowden revelations. They fall more in the category of confirming one's worst fears than being shocking. (Also, they are a bit of an odd example in this context because they are about things the US government is itself doing, not things about the world that US intelligence has discovered. Admittedly, if there had been equally shocking secrets of the latter variety they would have been less likely to have been leaked by an American because while surely the public has a right to know about and have a chance to approve of or not secret programs of the government (and this right has been and continues to be violated), it is much less clear when a secret known to the US government (perhaps discovered by one of its intelligence programs) must be disclosed to the public. (If the government is negotiating with aliens, I guess the public has a right to know about it before it goes on too long, but if it has a superspy in Russia or China that is providing shockingly detailed intelligence, not so much.)

Presidents' behavior does change versus what they probably honestly expected it would be, but the major changes seem to me to be reactions to public, not secret, information. For instance, Bush's plan for the presidency was radically reshaped by 9/11. And his invasion of Iraq was sold partly on the basis of their being intelligence about WMD, but this is sort of an anti-example since there wasn't any compelling intelligence (and moreover, in my view, it was pretty clear at the time based on public information that whether or not Saddam had a few chemical weapons squirreled away, he didn't have a hugely threatening WMD program, certainly not in comparison to North Korea or even Iran). Also, presidents probably often misjudge what they can politically do (e.g., Clinton promised to end the ban on gays in the military but ended up being forced into don't ask don't tell, or Obama promised to close Guantanamo failed because of bipartisan opposition and perhaps a failure of nerve or unwillingness to "expend political capital").