BACKSTORY 55.1 - Trump’s Lessons in Making Change

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As an organizer, over the decades, I’ve learned that to win campaigns, it’s important to understand fully those who oppose you.  I’ve also found that sometimes our enemies understand us better than our allies, because, frankly, they’ve also paid more attention in order to beat us.  These are early days, and I don’t mean to offend, but Trump in inadvertently teaching all of us who are in the business of helping people who have not had power what it takes to exercise power and make change. 

Lesson One - Forget About Tomorrow:   It’s not just a matter of Trump being a one-term president, especially since in order to stir the pot, he keeps threatening to try for three terms way past his expiration day so he can pretend he’s not a lame duck.  For a change we have a US president who cares nothing about the future of his party or its survival.  His programs appeal to his hard core, but he cares nothing about building a base or keeping a base that he seemed to be hijacking from the Democrats.  Workers, minorities, famers, veterans, Hispanics, and more mean nothing in his calculations.  If the changes he mandates hurt those groups, yeah, he claims he’s sorry, and it’s just temporary, but, fundamentally, he doesn’t care.  The lesson, if we were willing to risk learning it, is about seizing the time.  We say it, but even when we know the window is short, we can’t seem to help but hedge out bets, hoping to make change permanent and institutionalized.  We thought this door was open under Obama, and he frittered away trying to compromise and build his brand for the future, rather than maximizing his minute of power, as Trump is doing now.

Lesson Two – Don’t Ask for Permission:   None of us really believe in the rule of law, because we learn every day how it’s stacked against us.  Yet, when we have the opportunity to make change, we work at the margins, we press the envelope.  We don’t to everything possible to deliver to our people.  Trump’s people are rich and is teaching us to go wild and take the heat.  Reverse field, but ignore the part of the old adage that says we would rather say we’re sorry later, than ask for permission first.  Trump and his administration continue to go two steps forward and then one step back with one misstep and mistake after another, but he never explains, and even as he and Musk have the red ass, he never apologizes.  He knows that he will be stopped, but he’s all about how much change he can make before he hits the wall.  That’s radical.  We say we are radical, but when we have the opportunity, we keep one foot near the brake, while the other looks for the accelerator.  Trump is showing what happens when both feet stay, pedal to the metal, on the gas.

Lesson Three – Primary Loyalty Beats Merit:   Trump is letting the whole US government, both domestic and international, roll in a clown car.  There was a minute after he was elected that pundits and major media thought he couldn’t be serious about his nominees.  They were ridiculously unqualified.  Their own statements and records would disqualify many of them from working at a carwash, much less as potential appointments.  For Trump II, this was water off a duck’s back.  He only cared about one thing:  loyalty.  They all had to be “yes-people.”  You want to make change and exercise power, forget about Lincoln’s “team of rivals.”  Trump’s lesson is clear.  Get your crew and go for it.  Almost none of the cabinet is going to make it four years.  Some may hardly make it four months, but if you understand, as Trump does in his second go-round, that change is a sprint, not a marathon, go with your home team. 

Lesson Four – Ignore the Haters:    An article in the Times recently, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, said that Trump’s superpower of sorts is that he lies like a rug and ignores contradictions.  Even if it’s just a function of his narcissism, it’s really more than that.  He creates his bubble.  He rants away.  He doesn’t care what anyone says.  He is under no illusions that he is going to change any opponent or pundit’s minds.  He’s got the power, and he’s going to use it.  If we ever get the chance, we need not stop for anything either and definitely not pull back, because we think we can change minds.  We need to have the same kind of confidence in our base, that Trump is showing, coupled with no cares, even if that base disappears (see Lesson One). 

There are more lessons, but watching Trump with no margin of error in the House of Representatives, only the thinnest of majorities in the Senate, and a squeaker of a general election victory, still operating as if he not only has a mandate, which he lacks, but is on a mission from God, is almost surreal.  Perhaps, that’s the most important lesson that Trump is teaching.  When we win, like in sports, whether it’s pretty or dirty, a win is a win, so make the most of it.  Biden tried, because he learned something from Obama’s unfulfilled promise.  We may abhor what Trump is doing, who he is, what he wants to be, and his threat to any remaining pretense we held that we live in a democracy, but he’s teaching a master class.  We need to learn, and the next time we get a chance, we need to as ruthlessly take the power, make our dreams come true, and finally see the changes that matter in our lifetimes.  They are the devil, not us, and let them take the hindmost.

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