Piling Onto Trump

Your strength is your weakness

Opponents are piling onto Donald Trump, doing ads quoting him saying things he retracted within an hour of having said them.

Today's News:  Everyone piles on

It seems unintuitive that a candidate's strength is his weakness but this is actually a simple fact of branding.   The things that are ones strongest differentiating points can be interpreted in their negative form, the other side of the coin.  

Experienced?                    Part of the problem.

Strong and bold?              Cocky.

Garners huge crowds?     Mere celebrity.

Long track record?            Tired old ideas.

Honest and unscripted?    Steps on land mines.

And that last one is Trump, in the news today.   Steps on land mines.

Debra liked Hillary being "lawyerly"

My very first up-close event in this campaign was in August, 2015 when I attended an event for Hillary Clinton.   I liked what she said but thought at the time that she seemed scripted and cautious, and I told my lawyer wife that she seemed like an over-coached witness in a trial.   Everything she said seemed to have been carefully thought out and scrubbed of hazard.

I said she seemed "lawyerly" rather than honest.   My wife said "lawyerly" is good.  I said it is sort of good, but it seems like she is hiding something.   Others apparently sense it, since she is widely considered dishonest and untrustworthy.   Yet she is simultaneously considered experienced and professional.   In short, Hillary is Hillary: she won't stumble or bumble us into a war because she is an experienced pro, but she is covering up stuff she doesn't want us to know because she is always sneaking and dissembling about something, but will get away with it because she covers her tracks, barely.

Trump is the opposite. 

Donald Trump's strength is the presumed authenticity of his reactions because his gut instincts reflect what people think, especially people who have not thought carefully through the implications of something.

He says Muslims can't be trusted.  Lots of people hear this and agree.   No one can be trusted, which is why people lock their car doors and have passwords for their internet accounts.  But the news in Paris and Brussels and San Bernardino gives Muslims a special sense of hazard.  Some small percentage of them want to do harm, not because they are thieves or rapists like the random other people in the world, but they have a special ideological reason, which makes them more scary.  They don't want to kill us for our money, which "makes sense", they want to kill us for no good reason!   Some of them.   Whether from xenophobia, racism, religious bigotry or simple objective prudence based on actuarial fact, Muslims make lots of people nervous.   

Trump says it, flat out, they are a hazard, keep them out of the country.

The secondary and tertiary effects of such a policy is that it complicates things for relations with Muslim-majority allies, it interferes with our public relations position saying that religious intolerance in other countries is bad, it contradicts Constitutional interpretations, it breaks federal law on immigration.  Bottom line, when the implications are thought out what seems like a reasonable idea to many at first gut check glance (Muslims are scary, keep them out) is actually complicated and not necessarily a good idea.   Hillary is all about the complications but Trump is not, which makes Hillary seem lawyerly and hedged and boring while Trump seems clear and firm and full of common sense.

And in the current news cycle Trump said women who murder their unborn children should be punished, which seemed sensible to Trump for a moment, then the hailstorm of criticism started.   He was simple and honest in his gut response, which was the problem.

The news today is full of articles about the hazards of Trump having "winged it"--something I said yesterday.    (Never skip a day reading this blog!) 

Trump winging it is not a bug.  It is a feature.  It is part of his appeal.   I suspect he can get out of the current hole, because he will use exactly the same strength that got him into it.  He will wing an answer saying he mis-spoke, that he was thinking about religious logic and not sensible policy, and that the poor choice of words came from his honest off the cuff thought, not from a careful plan of prosecuting and jailing women.   His explanation will likely be credible because it will be true.  He didn't plan it out, so an "oops" makes sense.

Hillary is on all the news shows:  Trump meant it!

Contrast this with Hillary having switched from saying that the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal was the "gold standard" of world trade to saying she opposed it.   Even the most loyal of Hillary's supporters know what happened: the political ground is shifting on free trade and Bernie is killing her with it.   The tide is shifting against free trade and voters want someone open to greater protections for American workers.  So she switched positions.   It feels strategic and calculated and essentially dishonest for one simple reason:  it is exactly those things.

 She had a careful well thought out position and needed to change it, because she is a pro, The politics changed, so she changed.  It is what a pro has to do sometimes, change policies to meet a political necessity.   It is cynical--if one thinks that politics is about politicians saying only what they honestly believe--but it is natural and perfectly sensible--if one thinks that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence.  Hillary did what pros need to do sometimes--bend to the political will.  It isn't "honest from the gut", it is smart from the head.   That is Hillary--the smart pro.

Trump is honest from the gut, which has its own hazards. Trump the bull in the china shop as Kasich is calling him.   Hillary is saying he wants to jail a million women.   Trump is getting what Trump deserves: the flip side of the benefits of being the honest, plain spoken, speak from the gut non politician.   He stumbled into a china shop and now he is sweeping up the glass.