How Trump could have won

The US economy started 2020 like a locomotive charging down the tracks.  In any other presidential reelection year, high GDP growth and low unemployment would make an incumbent unbeatable.  But the pandemic had other ideas and Trump’s handling of it was likely the biggest factor in his electoral defeat.  

 

By many accounts, it was the final straw.  Moderates who might have supported Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, confrontation with China and tax breaks deserted him because of his failure to lead.  In its first post-election poll, Rasmussen Reports (a polling organization that called both the 2016 and 2020 elections accurately) reported that 56% of those voting for Biden were voting AGAINST Trump, not FOR Biden.

 

I think Trump could have won and won big.  Here’s how:  let’s roll the calendar back to March 11, 2020.  The headlines say that the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic.  President Donald J. Trump, Jr. calls a news conference which is broadcast worldwide.  Here’s how he begins: 

 

“My fellow Americans, today the World Health Organization has declared a global pandemic due to the rapid spread and deadly effects of COVID-19.  In response, I am declaring a state of national state of emergency to ensure this dreaded virus has minimal impact on all Americans and our economy. 

 

“The federal government has limited authority to dictate to the states and each state will find they have different needs as the virus spreads throughout the United States.  But we have extensive resources to support the states and I am determined to put them to best use.  At this point, our knowledge about the virus, its impact, and how it is spread is limited.  So, I have asked our best scientists to focus all of our resources on how best to lessen the impact and find a cure.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – a position he has held since the Reagan administration, will be the administration’s point man.  He will brief the press and the American public daily, providing updates as we learn more and guidelines to help the states fight what is likely to be among the greatest challenges in our history.

 

“What I ask of you, my fellow Americans, is that you heed the warnings and follow the advice of the experts.  

 

“I have also asked Vice President Mike Pence to lead a task force we are calling ‘Operation Warp Speed.’  Its mission will be to both marshal the resources at our disposal to limit the spread of the virus and to support our pharmaceutical industry in finding a vaccine that will stop this deadly pandemic in its tracks.

 

“I am also prepared to authorize the expansion of our manufacturing of critical medical supplies under the Defense Production Act, a law that was used to great effect during World War II to convert our factories to the production of tanks and planes.  Our needs during the pandemic are quite different.  We will be reviewing our nation’s capacity to produce critical medical equipment and supplies and respond accordingly. 

 

“There will be some frightening moments and many families are likely to lose loved ones as we fight this battle.  But we should remember that over the last 80 years the United States of America has come together to defeat the Nazis, stare down the Soviet Union in a Cold War and destroy Al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11.  There is nothing we cannot accomplish when we come together as a nation.

 

“COVID-19 doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat and neither do I.  Together, we can prevent the worst effects of this pandemic.  So, let’s get to work.”

 

Presidential declarations of this type are rare.  But they’re important when we are facing a national emergency.  FDR’s declaration that December 7 (Pearl Harbor Day) will forever be known as a “day of infamy” was such a moment.  As was George W. Bush’s trip to New York a few days after 9/11 when he stood atop the rubble of the World Trade Center speaking through a bullhorn and later threw the first pitch of the World Series in Yankee Stadium.

 

Such displays of character and leadership are what our nation needs in times of crisis.  Character matters.  Leadership matters.  But President Trump didn’t make that speech because he couldn’t.  He simply lacks the character and leadership skills to do so.  

 

And, so, we will have a new president in January.  It is my great hope that President Joe Biden can overcome the damage that’s been done.  Our nation needs the healing effect of strong leadership.  

 

WHO WILL LEAD? 

 

 

A serious personality disorder

In a moment of frustration, an old friend (a consultant in organizational development) blurted out: “in order to be CEO of a major corporation in America, one has to have a serious personality disorder and broadcast it widely.”  We were in my office and, after we had a few laughs about it, I replied, “Truth is… everyone has a serious personality disorder.  It’s just that, when you’re a CEO, it’s broadcast widely.”  I might have added, “even more so if you’re a political leader.”

Whether in politics or corporate life, the chief executive is rarely the expert on what to do.  However, he or she must be the expert on how to communicate what to do.  The absence of clear, credible communication leaves people in a state of fear which, in turn, leads to panic and the spread of misinformation.  People need to believe what their leaders are saying in order act responsibly and hang together as a community. 

Clear communication means being honest about what is known and what is not.  It means being open about what’s being done to find the answers and achieve the best outcomes.  And, the pronouncements from on high must match the ground level reality.  It does not reassure the public to say we can test everyone for coronavirus when everyone knows that’s not true.  Indeed, it makes matters worse.  It’s a breach of trust that leads to people not trusting anyone. 

There is not a clear path to containing coronavirus, keeping the public safe or balancing the risk of disease against the need to keep the economy moving.  In matters as complex as the pandemic, our leaders should encourage us to shed our tendency toward binary choices: extreme action versus fiddling while Rome burns.  In such times, it’s important to be guided by principles and values.  Despite our differences on fairness and the role of government, we share common values.  We believe in the sanctity of human life; the reciprocal obligations within our communities; and, respect for the rights, differences and dignity of others. 

So, what must be communicated?  In a word – Hope!  Hope makes our current situation more bearable.  Hope provides motivation to contribute our efforts to our community.  Hope links our current difficulties to a better future.  During this pandemic, what we hold dear is what is most challenged.  Our economic future is challenged; the health of our families is challenged; and, our psychological well-being is challenged.  A message for a hopeful

future must connect our current situation to a brighter future by being honest about what’s happening; communicating our plans to restore our communities; and, assuring the public of a consistent effort that marshals all our resources.

All of that can be communicated and should be communicated in spite of our personality disorders. 

WHO WILL LEAD? 

Cuomo and Crozier: contrasts in leadership

Governor Andrew Cuomo

We returned from a shortened seven-week vacation last week.  Part of getting resettled in our home was reinstalling a Roku we’d taken with us.  It’s an easy task I’ve done many times before.  Nevertheless, I tested it to make sure it worked properly.  Coincidentally, I turned it on as Governor Andrew Cuomo was giving his daily press briefing.  I never watch TV news (see Stop Watching Cable News Now); so, I hadn’t seen our governor in action despite hearing wonderful things about his leadership during the current pandemic.  

Regular readers know I am not a fan.  Yet, I was struck dumb as I listened to him.  Who is this guy? I thought.  He is calm, rational and articulate.  Where is the arrogance to which we’ve become accustomed?  Even his tone of voice had changed.  He answered questions directly without evasion.  If he didn’t know the answer to a question, he said so.  If a member of his team couldn’t provide a good answer, he said they’d find out.

There is no doubt he will have to make some tough choices in the days and weeks ahead.  He’ll move equipment to where it is most needed, move patients to facilities better prepared to handle them and approve triage protocols that sacrifice some in favor of others (much like it’s done on a battlefield).  The trust he has engendered will give him the credibility to make those decisions on behalf of the citizens he serves.  

Contrast Cuomo’s leadership with that of Captain Brett Crozier who, this week, was relieved of the command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft stationed in the western Pacific.  The whiners in the Twitterverse and the great grandson of the man for whom the ship is named have called him a hero.  I submit that not only is he not a hero, he has failed in his basic responsibilities as Commanding Officer.  

I must digress for a moment.  Americans take the security provided by the military for granted.  It took one hundred fifty years for the US Navy to achieve dominance of the seas.  In the post-Revolutionary War years, American ships were attacked routinely by the British Navy and the United States did not have the sea power to respond.  We have achieved our current status by virtue of the century-long pursuit of Manifest Destiny, our victories in World War II and the Spanish-American War (in which the aircraft carrier’s namesake was a central figure) and a deal made by FDR to take over the North Atlantic British naval bases prior to entering World War II.  Despite our diminished status (the US Navy has half the ships it had a decade ago), no foreign power would dare challenge the US Navy directly.  

 

Captain Brett Crozier (USNA '92)

What the military does to ensure our security is described as “readiness.” There is a lot of protocol or S.O.P. involved.  In battle, no one should have any doubts who’s giving the orders.  So, we observe a chain of command.  Since readiness is what we must achieve to go to war at the drop of a hat, we provide reports of our status up the change of command. Today, as has been the case since well before I received my officer’s commission, the movement of ships and their readiness to go to war are highly classified. 

An aircraft carrier is at the center of the Navy’s military capability and strategy.  To reveal its operational status on an unsecured communication channel is an egregious breach of a process meant to ensure the national security of our nation.  That’s why Crozier should have been and was properly relieved of his command.  

In his op-ed in the New York Times, Tweed Roosevelt describes Captain Crozier as a hero because he sacrificed his career to do what he thought was right.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t right.  The official statement of the Secretary of the Navy outlines the reasons why. 

As a midshipman at Crozier’s and my alma mater (U.S. Naval Academy), we were trained to say, “I’ll find out” rather than “I don’t know.”  We were trained to say “no excuse” when asked why we screwed something up.  The admiration heaped upon Cuomo has rightly resulted from his adoption of those kinds of responses.  He has exhibited true leadership where Crozier failed.

WHO WILL LEAD? 

The Fourth Turning: how Millennials will save capitalism

In my last post (Let’s understand just whatsocialism means to us (redux)), I decried the misguided belief that socialism should displace the capitalist system in the industrialized West.  Old, white guys like me won’t be around to turn the tide against this trend.  It will be the Millennial generation that saves capitalism.

In Neil Howe’s book “The Fourth Turning: AnAmerican Prophecy – What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny,” he outlines how four repeating generational cycles (or Turnings) determine social attitudes and ultimately govern the social contract. You can find a one page summary on his website.

Howe’s hypothesis will ring true to any student of American History as he traces the impact of events on rising generations and how each generation changes the social order. The WWII generation was in the driver’s seat for the most recent First Turning, the “American High” following WWII when the crisis of the Great Depression gave way to a period of prosperity characterized by high levels of trust in institutions. 

The Fourth Turning in this model is crisis. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 began the crisis that preceded the American High. Four generations later, Howe tells us, “Today’s Hero archetype youth, the Millennial Generation … show many traits similar to those of the G.I. youth, including rising civic engagement, improving behavior, and collective confidence.”  It is they who will develop a new social order in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

My contemporaries doubt this.  Like all generations of elders, we collectively take a dim view of youth that that we see as addicted to their smartphones and cowering in their safe zones.  But, I take a different view.  Studies by Big 4 accounting firm Deloitte show Millennials tend to develop values consistent with their elders once they form families.  And, they are also becoming entrepreneurs.  Their future success will be enabled by technologies their elders are, to some extent, ignoring like broadband, social media and 3-D printing.

Still not convinced? 

How about this? Businesses change their approach to the market when it’s in their best interests to do so.  Corporate values will shift as Millennials become their core customers.

In the post-industrial 21^th Century, it’s getting harder to succeed purely on the basis of what you produce.  Your innovation can easily be copied, produced in a low cost factory overseas and exported to any market.  In a world where nearly every consumer can compare prices and features instantaneously, the spoils will go to the lowest cost producer not the innovator. 

To succeed in the 21^st Century, corporations will have to “outbehave the competition…” according to Dov Seidman.  His book, “HOW: Why How We DoAnything Means Everything,” outlines how companies must engage all of the talents of their employees to extend enduring value to customers.  Those that succeed will be those whose behavior is aligned with its customers’ values.  They will accrue enterprise value by becoming internetworked with the communities they serve. To do so they must engage their employees by treating them fairly and giving them good reasons to be proud of what they do and where they work. 

Granted, my argument is highly speculative (or full of holes if you prefer).  The future is hard to predict.  I truly have no idea how Millennials will ensure our continued prosperity.  I simply know that every generation does so.

To buy into my argument one must have faith.  My personal faith is best captured in a quote from the late John McCain:  “Our shared values define us more than our differences.  And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust them again.”

Leaders of the Fourth Turning will be those who can merge our values with our aspirations.  It is they WHO WILL LEAD!

McCain as seen from Annapolis

My history professor during Plebe (Freshman) Year at the U.S. Naval Academy had been a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War.  He often deviated from the curriculum to tell “war stories.” Pilots who missed their targets were often those afraid to fly within the range of enemy ground-to-air missiles, he told us.  There were a few seconds when you had to fly straight toward the ground with missiles going past you at relative speeds of hundreds of miles per hour.  “They looked like telephone poles flying by,” he told us. 

That was 1967, the year John McCain was shot down over Vietnam.  His story was the stuff of legend during my four years at the Academy; and, I recall, like it was yesterday, being glued to the TV, as McCain was the first to disembark from the plane that carried him home from the Hanoi Hilton.  Although on crutches, he lowered himself to kiss the ground he walked on.  It was March of 1973, a month before my twins were born. 

Twenty-somethings embark on a journey of discovery.  How does the world work?  How can I ensure I will have a roof over my head?  How do I progress in my career?  As a young military officer, these questions were accompanied by discussions of the Cold War, politics and the Vietnam War.  It was only natural to wonder how one might stand up to the kind of treatment that McCain suffered.  I confess I never thought I could.

Of course, McCain was the most famous of the P.O.W.’s because of his father’s rank and position.  His actions served as an example for military officers both in and out of captivity.  One must wonder where he developed such a strong sense of duty and honor.  His record at the Naval Academy was certainly less than stellar.  In its obituary of him, the New York Times asserts that he “resisted discipline, broke rules, piled up demerits though never enough to warrant expulsion.”  They might have been describing me in that sentence, though I would never claim to have his courage.

The market values conformity.  Job performance is measured in part on the basis of our conformance to the rules.  John McCain never did well on that measure.  His departure from norms carried over to his political life. 

A popular video on social media shows him at a campaign event in 2008.  A woman rises to confess her fear of Barack Obama because “he’s an Arab.”  Refusing to take advantage, Senator McCain disagrees and extols Obama’s character to scattered boos.  He could have expressed sympathy for her point of view.  After all, spreading fear is how candidates get elected. That he didn’t was a mark of his character.

Less well remembered, but no less important, was his departure from Republican Party orthodoxy during his failed primary campaign in 2000.  Then he described Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.”  It’s an attitude and approach that was also reflected when he surprised his U.S. Senate colleagues by voting against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.  In his statement following the vote, he exhorted his colleagues to “stop political gamesmanship and put the health care needs of the American people first.”  Perhaps that’s why his 2008 presidential opponent, Barack Obama, said on Sunday “all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John’s best, he showed us what that means.”

But the event I remember most was his admission of a mistake in 2000.  He had called a Confederate flag at the state capital in Columbia, SC a “symbol of heritage.”  He later confessed that he feared losing the South Carolina primary “if I had answered honestly.”  Military training, including Plebe Year at the Naval Academy, involves breaking down conditioned responses.  Of the four allowable responses by a Plebe to an upperclassman, the most resonant is “No Excuse, Sir.”  Everyone makes mistakes.  But, failing to admit one – to make excuses – is a mark of poor character.

Over the last 25 years, there has often been a call for our military heroes to run for president -- Schwarzkopf, Powell, Petraeus. What’s their appeal? The sentiment transcends party politics. People don’t care about that. Quite simply, we long for true leadership – a “No Excuse” approach to the job. Isn’t that the mark of a true leader?

McCain was labeled a maverick because he wasn’t afraid to break with his party to do or say what he thought was right.  His history tells us why.  To quote Seth Lynn, the Marine Corps veteran who heads the Veterans Campaign, an organization that prepares veterans for a second career in civic service, “Military members have… seen that the enemy is the guy at the end of the battlefield, not the guy at the other end of the aisle".

WHO WILL LEAD?

Globalization vs. Nationalism: It's not your fault; it's our fault

In the 20+ years since the establishment of the WTO ushered in the era of free trade, the world has become more prosperous. And, that prosperity has been spread far and wide.  Billions of people in the developing world have moved out of extreme poverty.  The free exchange of goods, capital, and labor has created these opportunities under the umbrella of globalization.  Innovation, political leadership, social activism, entrepreneurship, and technology have all contributed.

As nations grow prosperous, their values change. First, as economies industrialize, the population moves away from “traditional values” in which religion, and deference to authority are important, and become more open to change. Second, as they grow wealthier, nations move away from values that emphasize the security of one’s family, or community, toward “values” that emphasize individual rights, not just for one’s own community, but also as a matter of principle, for everyone.

Of course, wealth creation does not automatically result in an equal distribution of rewards. Popular support for globalization has always rested on the premise that most would benefit, some could succeed beyond their wildest dreams through their own efforts, and a social safety net would protect temporary losers.

Among nationalists, those left behind economically see these trends as threats to normative values. Their shared sense of identity, norms, and history promotes trust within their cohort but not beyond.

This divergence in values has led to tribal behavior and polarization in developed countries.  Populist politicians – from Trump Republicans in the U.S. to the AfD in Germany and 5-Star Movement in Italy -- appeal to the emotions of those left behind with impossible promises of policies that will return to the good old days, while those with more cosmopolitan attitudes eschew the values that would support those policies.

“If you don’t behave according to your values, you will constantly be at odds with yourself. You’ll be in physical distress, treat others badly and destroy the relationships that you value most.” -- Excerpt from "The Reluctant CEO: Succeeding Without Losing Your Soul"

Today’s polarization is a result of how we, as a society, have chosen to manage globalization and technology.  Both political and business leaders share the blame. However, in this environment, business leaders -- who normally view themselves as problem solvers -- can no longer afford to view these circumstances as someone else’s problem.  Too many of our citizens feel we are off on the wrong track and socialism is now the preferred economic system among 44% of Millennials, an attitude that threatens our prosperity.

The right response lies in addressing these challenges head on.  For example:

• The era of cost-based offshoring will be succeeded by geographically dispersed, technology-based systems, like 3-D printing, to broaden the base of people who can benefit from a capitalist system.
• Technology platforms have evolved to support entrepreneurship that will decentralize the concentration of economic value in large, global enterprises.
• Most importantly, as we approach full employment, businesses can address their biggest challenge (lack of qualified employee candidates) by investing in human capital.  An education system that focuses on point in time certification (degrees, certificate programs, etc.) could be replaced by continuous education and training.  Technology platforms, like EdX and Coursera, can support an initiative like this today.

Even if successful, these efforts will not be seen as a path to societal economic success unless business leaders own the narrative.  A national – or perhaps global – business alliance should take on the task of economic renewal, telling and retelling their story in order to overcome current political trends and societal attitudes that will, over time, undermine our economic foundation.  

The only question…

WHO WILL LEAD?