Dear Donald

First, congratulations. You actually won. You have succeeded in giving a middle finger salute to the entire establishment – journalists, politicians, pollsters, the lot. Your gut was stronger than their dull analysis. Your communication was more effective than theirs, despite all their education.

You would have won even if you had lost. To make it a close election would have been enough to take revenge on all the sneering hypocrites, those who vacillated about supporting you, denigrated your campaigning skills and sneakily tried to fix the results. And you could have finessed a narrow defeat into a new media empire very handily.

But you did not lose. Somehow, you won. Obviously, even you were at bit surprised by the victory, and rather wrong footed by it.  And winning changes the game completely, because it changes the stakes and your motivation.

We know you are motivated by ego. You get kicks from doing a deal and from winning and from recognition. You especially like to get back at people who refuse to recognize you. So the last eighteen months have been all about those drivers.

The elite treated you literally but not seriously. The electorate was smarter, treating you seriously but not literally. Well, the elite will take you seriously now! You’ve earned their respect – indeed you’ve rubbed their noses in their own sneering dirt. All those articles and meetings where it was obvious that you were not considered quite their class – too brash, too brassy in your choice of women, not erudite and a polymath like them. Well – all that education didn’t really help them in the election, did it?

So every word you uttered, every tweet you offered, every document you supported had the sole purpose of winning the election. Essentially your platform was “Trust me”. As an outsider with business skills you claimed to be able to be effective, and everything else was just noise.

This annoys purists, who feel elections should be about detailed policies and not just personalities. Well, maybe they are right, but your voters did not seem to care. Further, these same erudite purists were the ones to devalue elections, not you. Apart from Obamacare, what did Obama run on that was implemented? Which of Hillary’s dull proposals stood any chance of getting through congress, and didn’t she know it? How many members of congress actually consider the interests of their electorate? Just look at the budget compromise at the end of 2014, full of sops to special interests and sneaked through with minimal scrutiny. No, you are not the one who broke the system.

Now those same pundits who derided your platform continue with the same mistake of taking things literally. Every day there is some story about what you will or won’t do based on who you are meeting with and what you said in the campaign.

They don’t get it. You have won now. The campaign and all you said in it are history. For now you will be president. And your motivation will still be driven by your ego. You don’t just want to be the president; you want to be a great president, up there Lincoln and Rossevelt. You are already thinking about your legacy. That is what is consuming you now, and that will eventually determine your actions.

Setting up for success will follow three key principles. First, as a delegating CEO, you need good people. Second, as much as possible you want to be insulated against events, to have space to govern. And third, you must utilize your strengths to create a few memorable big wins.

The first challenge may be the hardest. Your current team was set up to win the election not for governing. You can hardly be expected to work with people you cannot respect and don’t respect you, but you don’t want sycophants or usurpers either. One of your few honest campaign goals was to be an outsider, so you have to fight through the murk of Washington insiders to find some effective people. Finally, you have somehow landed at the head of a party of unprincipled people with no discernable policy beyond greed and a few freaky social views you disagree with.

This is tricky, so expect it to take time and have a number of iterations. A few loyal lieutenants will have to do for now, but expect the next year or two to be full of surprise appointments and sackings. It will be a bit like The Apprentice, actually! A tough one will be Supreme Court Justices, because you can’t sack those and they stay for life. Those pesky Republicans will demand social conservatives, but your heart is not there. Why not follow a tried and tested principle and just select on merit? Now, that would burnish the legacy nicely!

The second challenge is about space to govern, and here the campaign has created a problem, associating you with white supremacists and various other undesirables. During the campaign these folk were helpful, but now they jeopardize the whole operation. There are bound to be riots and shootings and all sorts of events, and you have to come across as measured and inclusive. You recognize this and your language has changed already. Perhaps Twitter will have to be a bit more filtered too – what a shame, tweeting is fun!

Then the third challenge is legacy projects. Your unique skills are as a dealmaker and as an outsider, and there are many areas where you can apply these. Those lemmings in congress will accept things from you that they would never consider from anyone else.

The most promising area is domestic economics, where congress has been deferring key issues for years. You can be the one to make tax increases acceptable to Republicans again, as part of a package to stimulate the economy, fix corporate taxes and make pensions and entitlements affordable once more. Immigration is another area requiring reform, and on this one you can even pay homage to your campaign, being tough on some illegals and even challenging the birth rule but at the same time opening the country to the talent it needs. In healthcare, you have already realized the Obamacare moves in the right direction, but you can do deals to make it affordable by attacking spiraling costs. Lastly, there is the possibility of some electoral reform to defang the lobbyists and moneymen.

Foreign affairs are more risky and you will have to surround yourself with wise heads to avoid your temperament getting the better of you, but here there are deals to be done too. You know your own trade rhetoric to be pretty empty, but at least you have now set up a good negotiating position, and maybe you can do something similar on climate change. There is scope for a generational agreement with China that would also remove the threat from North Korea. And what about the Middle East? As a rare president not dependent on donations, might you be the one brave enough to speak some tough truths to Israel?

Much of the world is despairing about your presidency, but that is because they have not worked you out. They listen to your rhetoric rather than thinking about your motivations and strengths. You’ll certainly need some luck, and to calm some of your instincts, but over time you have a chance to assemble a team of strong outsiders and to forge a fantastic legacy. Think about it – you might even earn some grudging respect. Go for it, Donald.

Trumped

It has been an extraordinary seven days. In common with many, I did not really sleep last Tuesday night, after the possibility dawned that Trump might actually win. A racing mind followed a racing heart. The following day, rainy and miserable, I made the wise choice to head to the city for some tourism and art therapy. It was interesting to observe how life seemed to carry on as normal. And three times during the day, artistic performances and rehearsals transported me from gloom – just as art at its best can.

The result was stunning, and opinion polls have once again proven fallible in the age of the internet. But for me a narrow Clinton win would have been almost as stunning, only not in its implications. Even if Clinton had won, over fifty million people would have voted for Donald Trump, a man almost everyone I know would consider manifestly unfit for any office, let alone president. How could this happen and what does it mean?

There has been some excellent writing about this during the final weeks of the campaign. Lexington in The Economist has been good, but Time magazine, for a change, has been better. Three articles caught my eye – one long essay about the end of truth, an opinion piece by the reliably excellent Joe Klein and a tongue-in-cheek effort by Joel Stein.

The long essay covered a topic that has been getting plenty of airtime, but explored it in great detail. Even fifteen years ago, there were limited outlets for current affairs, and these were largely honest, widely read, and fully trusted. Fox might have been a bit to right of NBC, and ITN a bit racier than the BBC, but all were careful to maintain balance and to base their journalism on fact. Tabloids stretched things further, but even they stayed within broad boundaries wherein opinion was separated from claimed fact.

In that environment, politics was about establishing policy differences and making these resonate with voters. We had manifestos, policy documents and evidence. All this has broken down, outside of marginalised publications such as the ones I read or watch, which most people find dull, irrelevant and condescending. Instead we have talk radio, blogs and services such as Breitbart, in which the agenda is everything and the evidence nothing. In as much as we choose to follow current affairs at all, we select services to feed our biases, and amplify that through social media, generally from people with similar bias. The article explained the extent to which this change has happened, and exposes the motivations of some actors (including Trump himself). Sadly it offered few solutions. Finding some has suddenly become an urgent task for society.

Trump’s campaign understood this new world and exploited it brilliantly. People like me, the so-called elite, observed it but underestimated it. To us, every gaffe or exposure of Trump made him less electable, and we waited with increasing frustration and bemusement for everyone to get the message. Poor old David Brooks on PBS initially saw a Trump ceiling at about 20% of Republican primary voters, and then had to increase his ceiling month after month, though never to the level that actually prevailed last Tuesday.

Joe Klein took this further, predicting that Trump’s campaign would change communication forever. While hating Trump’s content and method, he observed that Clinton’s communication, copying tried and trusted methods from the last fifty years, was stale to the point of rottenness. Nothing she said had not been tested on focus groups or moulded by committees, and it showed. Often, nothing was said at all, notably about e-mails or her other vulnerabilities. The language was that of the weasel, coming across as manipulative, condescending, inauthentic and filtered. This, combined with the obvious truth that no recent politician had actually got around to implementing much that they claimed to aspire to, doomed her message for a large segment of the public. And it consigned that method of campaigning to the dustbin. Klein is hopeful for how the next generation of really engaging politicians could use this new reality to create lasting energy. That becomes another urgent challenge for society.

Lexington took a historical perspective, and found that electorates, and especially Americans, are always roused by the idea of defending what they see as special and theirs. So a campaign that played up risks of terrorism and national decline was always likely to resonate.

Stein’s article adds another linked dimension. The prevailing wisdom among the elites was that the campaign was content free, and that this was a bad thing. We nerds love minutiae about tax and healthcare. But how many voters seek to understand much about these things? Stein posits that actually this election was all about content, basic content that had been swept under the carpet in previous campaigns, content about attitudes to race, globalism and societal norms. I struggle to accept this completely, but I would, wouldn’t I? It is certainly a fascinating claim.

If Stein is right, perhaps the abiding messages from the election are about defending a way of life and readiness for social change. Most of us in New York, Chicago, LA or San Francisco, living in open and diverse cities, think that it is now beyond debate that we should take a global view, accept our fellow humans in whatever shade of colour, creed or sexuality they wish to present, and to push towards gender equality. This has become axiomatic for us and for the Clinton campaign, and we can bully and patronise people who are not ready to accept these things.

We forget that most people do not share the benefit of our urban experiences. Sometimes, we forget that most of us were not always like we are now, indeed by our current standards we were racists and homophobes maybe only ten years ago. And it is too simple to categorise American as urbanites and cowboys. Last weekend I visited Greenville in South Carolina for a wedding. A lot of America is like Greenville, a wealthy, well-kept town with a large hinterland, welcoming smiles and modestly conservative values. Most people will go regularly to church. There is a thriving restaurant scene, some integration and some tolerance, but people fear their comfortable way of life being threatened and they certainly don’t like to be lectured or patronised, far less considered deplorable.

Lexington had these people in mind. So perhaps did Joel Stein. They are behind urbanites in their values, but does them make them hateful racists? They probably see the urban elites as going too far, too fast, and resent what they feel is characterisation as backward rednecks (with their beloved parents even worse). They probably think a world where there needs to be separate toilets for every letter in an ever-lengthening acronym is a bit weird. This doesn’t make them right, but it might explain their votes. We social liberals can draw comfort that history is on our side – we will just need to be a bit more patient than we thought. But we might think a bit harder about our judgments in the meantime.

Many such people will have concluded that Trump himself was just grandstanding, and that any outsider, even a distasteful one, might do better than yet another regular, sneering politician. The fact that Trump seems already to be backtracking on most of his policies might even mean they are partially right. There will also be Latinos who themselves resent other immigrants abusing the rules, black voters fed up with softness towards gangs and spongers, and women who think boys will be boys but that uppity women are even worse.

In any case, here we are. I am fearful for the future, but find I have another 52% (well, 49% this time) to find respect for, for the second time this year. There are some good possible outcomes domestically – only a Trump would have a hope for a grand bargain on something like tax and entitlements, by setting himself up as some sort of referee. Internationally, it is harder to be optimistic, and the bad scenarios are very bad indeed.

And, while there will undoubtedly be victims from this reverse, liberals might be able to learn and to come back stronger once again. There will be more good journalism to chew on in the coming weeks, gritted teeth and sour taste notwithstanding. And plenty of food for thought for blogs.         

Planet Graham

Sometimes I really do think I inhabit a different planet to everyone else. A few months ago a choir colleague directly accused me of this by when I expressed disinterest in viewing the Star Wars film. That comment made me take notice and reflect. What was extraordinary was that this was a group of narrow specialists that I identified with closely; they were people like me, or at least people with an important common interest. If they thought I belonged on Mars or somewhere else, what would normal people think?

Often, I’ll have an experience where I just struggle to comprehend or empathise in any way with the feelings of those around me. I recall recently sitting in the café of a huge mall in Toronto, with some relatives. It was clear to me that this place was somewhere they loved, somewhere they would want to spend a large part of their life. They were in their element, and even their conversation seemed to be foreign to me, with lots of reference to recent movies and celebrity events as well as inordinate discussion of clothes and other possible purchases. Luckily, one of them had a baby in tow, and this gave us a connection to planet earth, as I shared the warmth for the child, loved their stories, and joined in their love. In other contexts, sport can be the conversation saviour.

I was happy enough to be dumped in the café for a couple of hours to read my magazines over a coffee or two while the others shopped. But I just could not conceive of ever feeling that the place was anywhere I could ever positively want to be. For me, shopping is a chore to be dealt with quickly and efficiently, even on an occasion where I’m buying something fun. Outlet malls are versions of hell on my planet.

Movies often affect me the same way. Even adverts or trailers confuse me when they are not making me angry. Who could want to see all that violence – I never want to see a gun, in real life or in a movie. What about all those cartoons and aliens and super-heroes? Humanity is endlessly fascinating in its everyday stories, so why can’t we have more movies about those?

I could go on, of course. But I need to be careful. Is it a good thing to be on another planet, or does it just mean I’ve become old and judging and set in my ways? I rather like my planet, and I do try to avoid stopping you from enjoying yours – well, most of the time, when I’m not feeling grumpy or acting smug.

Actually, I think one of the biggest changes in society over the last generation is the extent to which we all live on our own private planets. Technology and changes in media are the main reasons.

When I was growing up, we encountered a narrower range of experiences. On Christmas evening, almost everyone in the UK settled down to watch The Morecambe and Wise Christmas show, and for the following weeks everyone talked about it. We all watched the same news on TV, and had similar frames for the world as a result. We were all suspicious of minorities because we had little direct experience of them.

Nowadays we are free to create our own planet, and most of us do. In my own family, everyone follows their own preferences on their own screens, and, while we try hard to share meals and conversation, there are more distractions than before. On balance, this creates opportunity and joy that more outweighs the loss of sharing a more uniform, compliant planet.

But living in a bubble has its risks. We see it in politics, where most of us form fixed opinions and seek and find reinforcement rather than challenge. This summer I shared dinner with a guy whose planet seemed from a different universe, full of conspiracy theories and certainty of what seemed outrageous claims. Afterwards I rationalised that this guy had a job where he was usually in his car, and I guess he followed talk radio. He was certainly confident, unshakeable even, and rather angry and sad and scary too.

It’s hard to see how to counter the downsides of personal planets at a societal level. Morecambe and Wise were great, but today’s variety is even better, for all of us. We shouldn’t try to regulate freedom, even if the result is Trump. Perhaps one day the technology will advance to make it easier to communicate between our planets. In the meantime, the best we can do, as usual, is to start with ourselves.

In Shell, for a long time my favourite advice to those I coached was to keep challenging assumptions. We have to make assumptions all the time in order to simplify our worlds, but we go wrong when those assumptions become too fixed, we should always remember they are hypotheses not fixed pillars.

There are many ways to do this. We can actively seek difference in our lives, and then be open to listening and learning its lessons. While technology makes it possible and even tempting to narrow our lives, it also offers possibilities to broaden them.

I try really hard to be listening and learning whenever I have the chance to be with people of different outlooks. Being with the youthful crowd at the summer choir festival is a blessing, and so is spending time at the old folks home where we volunteer. I also remember well the year or so when I regularly attended meetings of a twelve-step programme, where the background of my peers was generally very different from my own. Once, I asked an open question of the room, and a lady that I had always disregarded and probably judged adversely for her lack of education and erudition answered me with stunning wisdom. That lesson has stayed with me as much as anything else from the programme – that wisdom can come from surprising places, indeed the more surprising the place, the greater the potential value. I wish I could say that I apply that lesson all the time and no longer disregard or judge – but I cannot.

We can do the same with what we choose to read or watch or discuss. I’ve never agreed with the social nicety that topics like politics or religion should be avoided with strangers – indeed strangers have the most to teach us. Diverse opinion is always healthy, even if most of the time we choose to disagree.

At Shell, I learned a useful technique called Outrageous Opposites. One way to examine a claim or mindset is to reframe it as its direct opposite, and see how that makes you feel. An example is when I read articles about Russia or Iran. Sometimes I try to think myself into the mind of a Russian or an Iranian reader, with the article altered to replace their own country by the US.

Behind all of this is an open mind and a listening and learning stance. Perhaps the most dangerous consequence of this age of technology is the way it stops us listening. While our headphones are on, we are not usually taking in the rest of our environment.

When I left Shell, I asked a few people who had done the same what they missed most. The most common answer was the people; specifically the intelligent challenge that Shell people brought to life. Perhaps they were right, and part of my occasional frustration with life today on Planet Graham is that more days are spent confused in shopping malls and fewer engrossed in smart conversation. But actually I wonder if the opposite is true. Planet Shell has just as many pitfalls – it is diverse but not as diverse as humanity, and it probably colours our judgements and restricts our curiosity.

In the meantime, if you spot someone looking sullen in a mall café reading The Economist or a similar magazine, please try to strike up a conversation. You’ll probably be judged pejoratively and rebuffed. But maybe, just maybe, our respective planets can find a temporary common orbit to the benefit of both of us.