Clown Genius: Scott Adams on Trump

When a car salesperson trained in persuasion asks if you prefer the red Honda Civic or the Blue one, that is a trick called making you “think past the sale” and the idea is to make you engage on the question of color as if you have already decided to buy the car. That is Persuasion 101 and I have seen no one in the media point it out when Trump does it.

And what did you think of Trump’s famous “Rosie O’Donnell” quip at the first debate when asked about his comments on women? The interviewer’s questions were intended to paint Trump forever as a sexist pig. But Trump quickly and cleverly set the “anchor” as Rosie O’Donnell, a name he could be sure was not popular with his core Republican crowd. And then he casually admitted, without hesitation, that he was sure he had said other bad things about other people as well.

Now do you see how the anchor works? If the idea of “Trump insults women” had been allowed to pair in your mind with the nice women you know and love, you would hate Trump. That jerk is insulting my sister, my mother, and my wife! But Trump never let that happen. At the first moment (and you have to admit he thinks fast) he inserted the Rosie O’Donnell anchor and owned the conversation from that point on. Now he’s not the sexist who sometimes insults women; he’s the straight-talker who won’t hesitate to insult someone who has it coming (in his view).

.. On a recent TV interview, the host (I forget who) tried to label Trump a “whiner.” But instead of denying the label, Trump embraced it and said was the best whiner of all time, and the country needs just that. That’s a psychological trick I call “taking the high ground” and I wrote about it in a recent blog post. The low ground in this case is the unimportant question of whether “whiner” is a fair label for Trump. But Trump cleverly took the high ground, embraced the label, and used it to set an anchor in your mind that he is the loudest voice for change. That’s some clown genius for you.

An alpha-male fantasy that trumps reality

The second form of resentment Mr Trump channels concerns social class. The last effective exponent of this political undercurrent was Sarah Palin, before she quit her job as governor of Alaska to make money as a celebrity.

What is curious about the Palin-Trump style of cultural populism is that it has little to do with the growing economic disparities in American life. The resented betters are social elites in the media, politics and Hollywood, whom less educated, lower-middle-class Americans regard as behaving in a condescending or hypocritical way.

By contrast, Mr Trump’s relationship to his own wealth conveys an honesty that his followers say they like. Though he built his empire out of his father’s empire, he has never suffered from the sense of decorum or noblesse oblige that sometimes accompany inherited money. His style is not even nouveau riche so much as it is last-week-lottery-winner.

To Mr Trump, being a billionaire means plating everything in gold and slapping his name everywhere in huge block letters. It means that he gets to say whatever pops into his head and never has to say he is sorry. His celebrity “brand” is an alpha-male fantasy of wealth and power, revolving around the pleasure he takes in firing and suing people who displease him. He is the only 69-year-old white guy in America who gets to live like a rap star.

Rather than creating envy, the public role Mr Trump enacts validates the aspirations of his admirers. His popularity is an expression of reverse identity politics, which turns white males from defendants into plaintiffs in the contest of victims. He and his followers fixate on political correctness that disallows their grievances about the social transformation under way. His braggadocio and misogyny speak to male privilege lost. His male supporters regard his crude sexism not as juvenile behaviour but as a transgressive political statement.

In all of this, Mr Trump’s closest point of comparison is less to any previous American politician than to Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Both boast about their wealth, their brilliance and the beautiful women they attract. The key difference is that Mr Trump does not take himself all that seriously as a demagogue, lacking the self-discipline and long-range calculation. He is essentially a narcissist taking his ego out for a joyride. It will not last for ever, so enjoy the trip.

Donald Trump Is Reagan’s Heir

Trump is running on essentially the same message as Reagan. Reagan insisted that America’s problems were not as complicated or intractable as everyone seemed to think. “For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children and told there are no simple answers to the complex problems which are beyond our comprehension,” Reagan said at his 1967 inauguration as governor of California. “Well, the truth is, there are simple answers—there are not easy ones.” He made a similar statement in his famous 1964 speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, and he never wavered from it. The simple answer was to be tough—tough on cutting the budget, tough on domestic protesters, and above all, tough on the world stage. Reagan’s 1980 foreign-policy slogan promised “peace through strength.” He told audiences, “We have to be so strong that no nation in the world will dare lift a hand against us.”

.. When a Washington Postreporter asked him recently if he had encountered any campaign issue that turned out to be more complex than he initially thought, he wouldn’t take the bait. “This is not complicated, believe me,” Trump maintained.

.. The message—that simple solutions exist, but other leaders lack the strong will to implement them—was a central aspect of Reagan’s appeal and is key to understanding the Trump phenomenon. But in the long term it won’t pay off for Trump as it did for Reagan because of two major differences between the 1980 election and the 2016 election: the opposing candidates and the voters’ mood.

Reagan’s message worked beautifully against Jimmy Carter in 1980 because it drew on their differences. Carter’s speeches as president emphasized that there were no simple solutions—restoring America’s confidence and prosperity, he said, would take years of hard work and sacrifice (most memorably, he told people to turn down their thermostats and drive less). It was very refreshing for voters to hear someone saying the opposite.

.. And even if Trump were running against a Jimmy Carter, his task would be much harder than Reagan’s, for in 1980 the public’s mood verged on desperation. Events in Iran and Afghanistan dealt a serious blow to the confidence and pride of a supposed superpower still reeling from the humiliation of leaving Vietnam to the communists. Of even greater concern to most voters, the economy was in shambles, with real GDP shrinking at an alarming rate and inflation soaring to nearly 15 percent (the highest figure since the aftermath of World War II).

.. A recent poll found that 86 percent of Republican voters believe the country is on the wrong track, compared to 67 percent of independents and 48 percent of Democrats.