POLITICAL STRATEGY IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

I have often found it helpful to view events through the lens of strategy.  It is superficial and often misleading to read a headline or a quote and attempt to draw conclusions of the actors’ intentions.  It is quite another exercise to look behind the words and attempt to decipher a more complex strategy at work.

Leaders of armies, sports teams, major corporations and political parties all have strategies.  Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial, to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see the woods rather than individual trees. As important as having a strategy, is the ability to understand the strategy of an opponent and to incorporate that understanding into one’s own strategy.

In my view, classical Greek cultural has provided us with the most fundamental and still most valuable competing interests in developing a strategy, brute force vs. trickery.  These contrasting qualities sprang from Homer represented respectively by Achilles (strength) in the Iliad and Odysseus (cunning) in the Odyssey. These concepts were expanded on by Machiavelli as force vs. guile. On the one hand outsmarting an opponent risked less loss from open conflict, on the other it demonstrated an opponent that could not be trusted when ongoing negotiations were in order.

I often find myself comparing similar strategies employed by different actors over the course of history.  For example, a review of George Washington’s strategy during the American Revolution looks a great deal like the North Vietnamese strategy during the War in Vietnam.  In both cases the weaker combatant let the more powerful opponent occupy the cities; took control of the countryside; would strike the enemy through small skirmishes; and engaged in larger battles only when the conditions were right.  There was an overall strategy that the superior enemy, fighting far from its homeland, would become disillusioned with the war effort and call for an end to hostilities.  Both the American colonial and the North Vietnamese armies won their respective victories by exercising cunning against strength.  

Sometimes a strategy works exceedingly well under one set of circumstances but utterly fails in another.  The Marshall Plan must be considered one of the most successful rebuilding programs in history, following a major conflict.  Western Europe and Japan were given the economic assistance that permitted stable democratic societies to grow and flourish.  When a similar strategy was implemented in Iraq, a society with a history of corruption, tribal factions and religious differences, establishing a stable democratic society has proven next to impossible.

Strategy in sports is an American tradition that now occupies more commentary space than any other topic of the daily newspaper.  Managers and coaches try to create favorable match ups and the sporting public, writers and broadcasters spend hours dissecting and criticizing plays that took only seconds to perform.  Consider the decision by the Seattle Seahawks to throw the ball at the one-yard line at the end of Super Bowl 49. The pass was intercepted and defeat was snatched from the hands of victory.  That one play has attracted as much attention as any strategic decision of the last decade.

Which brings me to the state of American politics as it relates to formulating strategy. There is a tendency among those opposed to the Trump Presidency to react to every tweet and to take the moral inventory of every Republican who does not “stand-up” to Trump, without considering the strategy behind such behavior.

Each inflammatory word or action by Trump receives the full attention of the media and from political commentators.  This leaves little space to consider the less flashy but more important questions of:  What are Trump and the Republicans seeking to accomplish?  What federal programs are being dismantled, and who will be effected? What regulations have been revoked in the areas of finance, the environment, education and medical insurance? How many conservative federal judges have been seated that will control federal jurisprudence for decades to come?  What has the new tax law done to inflate the federal deficit?

In my view, the Republican party has a strategy that is crystal clear and must not be overlooked.  Ride the Trump train for all it is worth until its inevitable crash.  Undo all the achievements of the Obama years and then take aim at the accomplishments of the FDR and LBJ administrations as well. 

The Trump strategy is a bit different but just as evident.  Control the news cycle with as much noise as possible so that the dismantling of progressive achievements can occur in relative obscurity.  The phrase “crazy like a fox” gains new meaning once Trump’s strategy is understood.

If any political group does not have a coherent strategy, it is the Democratic Party.  Trump is playing the political game by a new and little understood set of rules.  But attacking the steady stream of Trump improprieties and hoping to take back the House of Representatives followed by the pipe dream of impeachment does not make a strategy.  At best, this approach will win some elections but fall far short of the mandate needed by the democrats to govern effectively.  Now that the paradigm has shifted a new strategy must be developed that informs citizens on a daily basis what they are losing, not what Trump is saying. 

The next two national election cycles will not be won or lost based on morality, civility, character, outrageous conduct or removal from office.  That is the narrative Trump is hoping will be adopted by the Democratic Party.  Such an approach will harden Trump’s support and permit campaigns to be decided by gutter politics, according to his rules.  Rather, the elections must be about the electorate gaining a clear understanding of the republican strategy, what is being taken away and what must be done to win it back. 

To return to the Greek concept of strategy, democrats ultimately are in a position of strength if the party is able to unite all elements of the party and bring them to the polls. This should well outpace the Trump strategy based on fewer republican voters and cunning. But for this to work, democratic strategy must about policy and not simply about attacking Trump and his supporters.  Democrats must avoid the Trojan Horse which seeks to divert from the real issues and to flip the narrative. Meaningful victory with a mandate to govern will be achieved by sticking to the facts and to the economic, social and international issues that concern voters.