How might Donald Trump's skill set serve us?

Who is Donald Trump, and what might he do as president? When we roam through the history of the American presidency, winners and losers, can we find anyone remotely like him? Not really.

Amazing as it might seem, this country has never elected a full-fledged, career businessman to the presidency. Calvin Coolidge may have famously advised that the "business of America is business," but few actual businessmen have so much as flirted with the idea of running for the highest office in the land.

Lee Iacocca was one, but his flirtation was just that and nothing more. Ross Perot was another, but his third-party bid fell short. At the turn of the last century, press baron William Randolph Hearst sought the Democratic Party nomination but got nowhere. Utilities magnate Wendell Willkie did secure the Republican nomination in 1940, but he could not stop FDR's bid for a third term.

Only Herbert Hoover comes close to capturing the dual title of businessman-president. And we all know how his time in office turned out. But Hoover had actually retired from the business world in 1914. Only 40 at the time, the mining executive would devote the rest of his long life to public service.

Not so the near-septuagenarian Trump, who only now has decided that the public needs him. Still, it's worth noting that Trump, like Hoover, has chosen to make his debut as an office-seeker by running for president. Maybe there is a reason that political amateurs don't tend to make good presidents.

Of course, Trump is no amateur when it comes to the politics of the modern media. Nor is he exactly an outsider. But do his background and his skill set (to borrow from the world of sports) suggest that he would make a good president? It's fair to wonder.

Trump has sometimes been compared to three past presidents, each of whom can be characterized as having had a successful presidency. They would be Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Let's tackle the comparisons in reverse chronological order.

Reagan's conservatism led him to take just the right approach to the Soviet Union, whether that be his military buildup or his calling out the "evil empire" — or the patience and tact that he demonstrated while winning the Cold War without a shot being fired.

To be sure, we have had a few presidents not known for either quality. One who comes immediately to mind is Theodore Roosevelt. Is the brash Trump another TR? Hardly — and not simply because the latter advised "speaking softly" while wielding that "big stick."

The first Roosevelt was a man of irreproachable character; Donald Trump is not. (The young widower Roosevelt pondered the morality of marrying a second time even though his first wife had died.) President Roosevelt railed against the "wealthy criminal class." Trump is a harrumphing advertisement for it. A man of some inherited wealth, TR cared little about making money. A man of great inherited wealth, Donald Trump has long demonstrated that he cares about little else — at least the day before yesterday.

Perhaps Trump can best be seen as a latter-day Andrew Jackson. Like Jackson, Trump claims to be leading a popular revolt against the establishment. For Jackson, the enemy establishment was the Virginia Dynasty, coupled with the Adamses, father and son; for Trump, it is the entrenched Washington elite. Then it was the crony capitalism of the Second National Bank that Jackson fought and defeated. Today it is the crony capitalism as practiced by, well, by businessmen like Donald Trump.

Here is another obstacle to establishing a link between Trump and Jackson. The 19th-century warrior-president was a genuine military hero who bore wounds inflicted by three enemies: the British, the Spanish and the native peoples. During the American Revolution, the young Andy Jackson was even a brief loser-captive. Trump's untrumpable military experience has been confined to a military academy for rich kids.

Yes, Jackson and Trump are both populists of sorts, even demagogic populists at that. On second thought, that phrase is probably redundant. Yes, Jackson was full of resentments. Trump, on the other hand, prefers to play on the resentments of others.

Still, Jackson may well be the closest we have had to a truly populist-minded president. Populist movements certainly have been scattered throughout post-Jacksonian American history, but they have never succeeded in winning the White House, much less in capturing the entire government.

Huey Long was a populist with national ambitions. A career politician, the Louisiana governor and senator (who for a time was both at once) was assassinated before he could mount his Long-desired presidential campaign. When asked to describe himself, the Louisiana Kingfish simply blurted that he was "sui generis."

Donald Trump probably knows about as much Latin as Huey Long, but he is one of a kind as well. We've had a former businessman (Hoover) and a sometime populist (Jackson) as president. But an unapologetic businessman who is also a freshly minted populist? That's a twofer the likes of which we have never seen. And if twofer Trump should succeed in his quest for the presidency? Then what? We'll have little choice but to batten down the hatches and wonder just how this thing is going to turn out.