What wins in the "style vs substance" debate?

If you listen closely, there's a meme forming: "I really don't like Trump the person, but I like a lot of what he's doing."

The Left loved Obama because he (seemingly) had style.  A smooth operator.  His oral delivery made everything sound like the truth.  Was thin and well-dressed.  Stayed on teleprompter and rarely went off-speech (when he did, he was a bit... lost).  Seemed sooooo sincere because he was sooooo smoooooooooth.  A polished politician, to be sure.

Trump, OTOH, is gruff and unkempt and a somewhat overweight.  He eats McDonalds.  He doesn't have "smooth moves": he jerks around and constantly uses a lot of hand gestures.  He tweets way too often, and his tweets are sometimes quite rude (and insulting).  He almost always wanders off-teleprompter and off-script, and sometimes blurts things out in a speech that would have been better left unsaid.  The least "polished" politician we've had since... well, since I've been alive anyway.

Style.

But as far as substance, Obama managed to do very little in office other than tread water.  I'll skip over the multiple foreign policy faux pas that occurred under his watch (Iraq, Iran, NORK, Russia, Benghazi, et al), the multiple political scandals and missteps (IRS, Fast and Furious, etc), his use of "czars" in an effort to rework the American ideal, and his "phone and pen" pseudo-royalty commands (some of which were denied by the SCOTUS - at least one unanimously).  Here at home, he supported the PPACA and drove millions off their health care plans while forcing them, and the rest of America, to pay for lavish plans for millions of others (many of whom were willingly unemployed).  He attacked the 1st and 2nd Amendments and implemented oppressive and impossibly complicated financial rules that constricted bank and corporation operations.  He supported an increase in taxes while also increasing the food stamp rolls and welfare payouts (aka "wealth redistribution").  Unemployment rose, manufacturers temporarily or permanently shuttered, and economic growth was stagnant.

Then, after steering the country in the wrong direction because he had no effective understanding of economics, he claimed that the economic doldrums he presided over were the "new normal".

Trump has managed, in just under 2 years, to do what Obama said was undoable: improve the economy, decrease unemployment, reduce regulations, and pass a tax cut/reform bill.  Unemployment is dropping, manufacturers are moving money back onshore (something the revered Thomas Friedman said wouldn't happen) and using it to build new facilities and hire American workers, and regulation reform is allowing construction to move forward at speeds not seen in decades.  By opening ANWR and the two pipelines, he has made the US a net exporter of oil - something that the "experts" said could not happen (remember "peak oil"?)  He hasn't been able to repeal the PPACA but he has changed its regulations ("The Secretary shall determine") to permit new plans to be put in place, some of which will allow health insurance purchase across state lines.

This might be because Trump is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, so he has a deep understanding of business economics (“The chief business of the American people is business.” - Coolidge).  And because Trump understands how deal making is done (he wrote the book on it), he's using those same techniques to show other countries that "doing business with the US is better than doing business against the US".

The left believes that Friedman, a columnist for the NYT, is wiser than Trump when it comes to economics.  But it was Friedman who claimed that Trump's election would almost immediately "tank" the market and drive the economy into the dirt.  He still writes that it's "about to happen".  Any. Day. Now.

Yes, the economy will eventually cool off again.  Economies are cyclical.  But it was Friedman who agreed with Obama about the "new normal".  It seems that he was wrong - for now.

The fact that Trump has managed to disprove Obama's "new normal" is at the heart of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Obama was style over substance.

Trump is substance over style (heck, Trump has very little style at all).

And it's making the left crazy.