Plan B Against Trump

 I still remember my emotions on the day after Trump was elected in 2016. IN common with others, I couldn’t watch as the results started to come in, and on the rainy Wednesday morning I was in a daze, unable to comprehend what had just happened. I went into Manhattan for a matinée and found the most people shared my somber, stunned, mood.

 

Later that week my thoughts moved more towards the implications and the damage that could be inflicted on our precious world, and to counting the months until the nightmare would be over. Each year brought outrage but also relief that somehow war hadn’t broken out and that some societal functions remained resilient against the onslaught. There was grim joy in concluding that Trump’s own gross incompetence had been one reason for the absence of many foretold disasters.

 

Then 2020 dawned and it became clear that the nightmare might indeed not end that year. Trump was at his high point in the polls, the Democrats looked likely to choose a vulnerable Bernie as candidate and the economy was humming along. As we now know, it was only Covid that turned things around, and even with that massive following wind, made only stronger by the deranged president, the election still finished in a near tie.

 

I still shake my head in sadness as I contemplate how over seventy million adults voted to re-elect Trump, how most of those still believe he won and how a frightening subset would contemplate violence to restore their imperium. As we look towards 2024, most commentators concede that a restoration to power is a likely scenario.

 

Just because we survived last time, we should not be complacent about a second dose. Trump himself will be older and would even less predictable and more intolerant. His next generation of yes men would be even more cynical than the last lot, have more nefarious agendas and perhaps be more competent. Weakened institutions, including the election process itself, might crumble under a new assault. China will be ready.

 

It is not disrespectful to democracy to dream up a strategy to stop this horrifying prospect, so long as the means are lawful. Indeed, it would be disrespectful to democracy not to focus huge efforts on such a strategy. So what should that strategy comprise?

 

Plan A was not too bad but is clearly proving insufficient. Apart from the morbid but clearly unreliable aspect of hoping Trump might die or become incapacitated, the components seem to be starving his voice, chipping away at Republicans, succeeding in government and legal avenues.

 

Some of these have had some success. The silencing, executed by social media platforms, must be a huge frustration for the ego-obsessed Trump. He has been driven towards marginal platforms with low resonance and to relying on proxies. Sadly, the main proxies remain effective. Fox News has not changed one iota. Nor has the populist press, and it is no coincidence that Murdoch owns many of those outlets too. The saddest part about all this is that many Americans only receive their news and opinion from this type of source, and the beguiling simple messages are constantly reinforced.

 

The legal approach is starting to bear fruit, but is inevitably slow, since that is how honest law operates. Those of us who hoped Trump might be in jail by now were always likely to be disappointed. There will no doubt be fines aplenty to come, but nothing to legally disqualify him. And any hopes that some of the mud might stick are delusional – Fox and others will only use setbacks as an opportunity for martyr and witch hunt narratives.

 

The other two plan A strategies have had almost no success. Almost no Republicans with any wish to retain or regain power have shown any backbone. To have hoped otherwise was always optimistic. To expect any change, especially after January 6, would be delusional. As for successful governing, this was always doomed. The 50-50 senate could not achieve much in the face of the resolute cynicism of McConnell, what is achieved legislatively will only bear fruit after several years, and the echo chamber will undermine any message. Opposition is much easier than governing, and the easiest part is pedaling strategies that need never be implemented (and even in government most Trump supporters don’t seem to have noticed that little of consequence was implemented). We can forget about Democratic success in government having an impact on voters.

 

So plan A has not really succeeded, though perhaps the legal approach can lead somewhere substantial in the end and must stay as a pillar in plan B too.

 

My main change in strategy would relate to the silent treatment. Having Trump deprived of his personal pulpit remains excellent, but it is not enough. Biden and Democrats seem to have been following a strategy of not mentioning Trump at all, perhaps hoping that this and the silent treatment will take him out of the news completely. This now feels foolhardy. Biden himself seems to have recognised this in recent weeks, especially with his personal attack of Trump in his speech on the anniversary of the insurrection.

 

I think the new strategy should involve more attacks, and be very focused on both Trump and aimed at those in his base. Endless outrage pieces have no impact, because the only ones outraged are the ones in the other echo chamber. The attacks have to chip away at the base somehow. That means repetition, simplicity, and a focus on demonstrating how Trump has no true respect for his own base and only harms them.

 

Trump is a walking scandal, and surely there is much more dirt than can be dug up, and not the lazy kind that only outrages people like me. What has he been on record saying about his own supporters? Who of his own base has he shamelessly robbed? Which of the values that his own base espouses has he trashed? I don’t think this would be an especially tough assignment for investigative journalists. Extend the field to include Trump’s acolytes and the assignment becomes easier still. What has DeSantis been up to? McCarthy? All the little Trumps?

 

This drumbeat of scandal can complement much simpler messaging from the Democrats about policy. It is tough for them to focus their messages, because there is so much they want to do and most of it is laudable. But is complex, hard to demonstrate, and also often easily drowned by some outrage from the other side. Immigration is a powerful Republican talking point. Where is the simple equally powerful (and less racist) message from the other side? I don’t currently see it, and without it the Trump faction could sweep the board, including by winning over many more Latino voters, who have become established in the USA by hard work and don’t see why it should be easier for others.

 

Then there are other potential opinion formers. Sports stars do their bit and there may some traction there. Companies can be stirred into action when their own interests are threatened or they see an interest in being responsible in front of their employees. What about churches? Money talks and habits die hard, but surely the Catholics ought to be progressive from their single issue campaign by now and noticing how the party they seem to lead towards has been captured by somebody whose values are the opposite of those in the Gospels.

 

Will plan B work better than plan A? Perhaps it will, and perhaps not. Playing dirty can feel like betraying values – remember Michelle Obama and “when the go low, we go high”? Perhaps I am panicking, but I think the time to go low has arrived. The stakes for all of us are too high this time.           

Whatever works

 I spent a fair chunk of my career trying to manage networks of petrol stations. Perhaps that sounds rather pathetic. But I am not complaining, because it gave me a good living, introduced me to interesting people and taught me many life lessons.

 

The first trick to managing networks of petrol stations is to understand one station. A petrol station is like many small businesses. People, detail, standards, expectations and money all matter a lot. Petrol stations have their own little quirks, and it helps to be an expert in those, but a lot of the skills are more generic and transferrable to other businesses.

 

So managing a network is mainly about optimizing its elements, and many of the same priorities are equally important at a network level. It is grinding work without quick fixes. We need to trust people but also to be skeptical. We need to see a big picture but to keep a close eye on tiny details. Count those cigarettes every day, and be seen to be counting them!

 

There are many levers to pull, but a lot of them are frustrating. In the same way that a soccer team relies on motivating different players in different ways, many levers work well on some stations but have unintended negative consequences on others. Grandiose strategies like brand differentiation are critical but often fail to match realities on the ground and only yield benefits in the long term. Pricing offers the temptation of immediate impact but can be a hornet’s nest. Station level details like recruitment and maintaining standards can seem to have little impact at network level. Some levers feel tempting but either carry prohibitive initial cost or face regulatory blockers.

 

In my experience, this often causes managers (including myself) to reach for the shiny lever called the system. In the case of petrol station networks, this refers to the contractual and operational relationship between the network owner and the managers of individual stations. Who should own what? How are incomes and costs shared? What leverage and security does each party have, and what risks? What procedures deal with special situations?

 

It is a gross simplification, but for stations owned by the network owner rather than individual operators, a key choice is between company operation and some form of franchise where the operator has more control. In the first case the operator is like a manager, paid a salary with incentives and bonuses, while in the second case the operator is more like a business owner, running their own ship within a framework of rules.

 

The generic pros and cons of each approach are obvious. Company operation seems to retain more control and sanctions, allows network level initiatives without negotiation and retains more upside. Franchises can incentivize hard work and care, so fraud will usually be less and decisions can be made with more agility.

 

I learned many lessons by living through this debate and through implementations. The first lesson is to avoid lazy labels. The top line may say company operation, but underneath the detail might work more like a franchise, and vice versa. The detail matters more than the label. In the same way, dogma does not help. Many of us lean towards a franchise or lean towards control, but we should always be open to whatever will work in a given situation, rather than simply applying our dogmatic bias to every case.

 

Next, resist pulling that lever! Change is always costly, slow, and loaded with unintended consequences. It is also never a panacea – a terrible network with terrible operation will not be transformed merely by a system change. But it is also important to pull that lever occasionally. Systems become tired and over time the flaws become endemic, so the time for change eventually comes around. Good practice is to evolve a system gradually via incremental change, but that can be difficult.

 

Next, context is everything. Are we growing or declining, and a market leader or a distant follower? What best fits the local economy, in terms of talent, regulation, common practice or other factors? How does the decision fit with our wider company culture and strategy?

 

Next, horses for courses. Not every station needs to have an identical model. Hybrids may be operationally necessary or even beneficial. We should play to our strengths, be adaptable and always learn.

 

Finally, implementation is everything. Details matter, and these include transition, training, communications, pace, handling of special situations and maintaining operational focus during change.

 

My example comes readily to mind when thinking about the much larger question of political systems for countries. There is constant chatter comparing democracy to autocracy, these days especially when it comes to the war of words between the USA and China. A few weeks ago, Chaguan, normally my favourite Economist writer, made a ritual defence of the values of the west in comparison to China, and it all rang very hollow to me. China has many flaws and engages in reprehensible behaviour, but lazy analysis abounds.

 

All of my generic lessons apply. The first is about lazy labels. Communism versus capitalism has overtones of company operation versus franchise, and democracy versus autocracy has its own generic pros and cons. In both cases, lazy labels only hinder intelligent thought and debate. Every model has its own quirks, and many details make up the overall picture. Chaguan relied on such lazy thinking, and sadly that is often all the west has to offer these days. Our system sucks but at least we can vote! Well maybe, but in the US votes are rare, usually meaningless in gerrymandered constituencies, appoint representatives who follow no manifesto and are often fodder for lobbyists and are stymied by dysfunction, corruption and inequity, including in the courts.

 

So we must look beyond labels and beware dogma. We should also resist pulling the system lever, especially without a strong implementation, as the Soviet Union tragically demonstrated in the 1990’s. Adaptable, incremental change within a system is key, and here the US is a disaster area, while China has recently done a wonderful job.

 

Then there is context. It can be argued that the current model in China is ideal for its stage of development, though I acknowledge that this would sound very hollow to somebody languishing in a Uighur indoctrination programme. The general context of the mind set of the majority of the people, the level of development and education, the relative position compared with other nations, and the international constraints and opportunities, would point towards centralised decision making within a structure of clear strategy and goals. They have also been smart with horses for courses. Xinjiang is a brutal example, Hong Kong and Macau also questionable but effective, and policies stratifying cities and regions are excellent. Look out for unexpected but brilliant moves concerning Taiwan, perhaps starting with the TSMC, the world’s leading microchip company.

 

And implementation is everything. It will not last, the time to pull the lever will come eventually as complacency sets in, and there will be losers as well as winners, but I sense the Chinese winning streak has some time to run yet. The quality of implementation is in a different league to their main adversary in so many areas, and I see little sign of that changing.

 

In the west, we would do well to go beyond dogmatic slogans and labels, and start to find some incremental fixes to our myriad problems. Oh, and perhaps it is a mistake to confront an adversary whose system may be less appealing but who seems to be playing a better game than us just now. 

Unhelpful Binaries

I wish a happy New Year and a healthy and less frustrating 2022 to everyone.

 

I had my second bout of Covid in the last week of 2021. The first time was at the start of the pandemic, and I only found out three months later when I took an antibody test. Then I could look back, recall a couple of days of a sore throat, and many possible occasions before the panic started when I could have picked it up from my heavily infested Queens neighbourhood.

 

This time had similarities. This new variant seems to everywhere just now, especially in heavily populated New York. We are smarter about hand washing, distancing and masking now, but the virus still got through despite my three vaccinations, probably at a family gathering. It is still not easy to get a PCR test, but I needed one for my church choir and managed to secure an appointment last Wednesday at a city run site, which duly came back positive, just as mild cold-like symptoms started to emerge. My wife and I had both taken antigen tests earlier in the week that came back negative.

 

My main takeaway from all this is about a series of unhelpful binaries. Whenever we take a binary, yes or no, approach to anything about Covid, we seem to make silly mistakes.

 

The first binary is about whether we have Covid or not. My suspicion is that most of us in densely populated areas where Omicron has started to spread have at least some Covid. But we are not encouraged to think that way; instead we divide the population into those that have it and those that do not. Especially at the beginning, when we thought Covid was almost a death sentence, this binary approach unnecessarily added to our panic. We wanted to call a priest for the last rites if we so much as touched a doorknob.

 

True, some communities did not have any Covid, so it was safe to do more or less anything there. Even now, in places with aggressive policies like China and Australia, Covid can be isolated and eliminated quickly. But most places are not like that. There is some Covid around and probably most of us have a bit of it some of the time. With Omicron the chances have gone up. Our challenge is not to keep it out completely, but to take smart steps to keep the level low enough to restrict the danger, and to further improve our odds by shoring up our immune defences via vaccinations and good hygiene.

 

This logic extends to tests. We tend to view test results as binaries. Indeed most tests come back with a binary positive or negative result. That is not as helpful as it could be. PCR tests are much more sensitive than antigen tests. The likelihood of false positives or false negatives is quite high with antigen tests. PCR tests measure not whether the subject has a current infection but a current or recent infection, so will give positive results for several weeks after somebody is clear of Covid. Even the most sensitive and well-executed tests have to set a cut off level to yield a positive result, and results may cluster around that level, so many positive tests will indicate only slightly higher levels than many negative ones. In practise test execution is mixed, especially when administered at home. All this also requires people to be able to actually find tests and to get results within a time interval where they are of any use.

 

Then there is the reliability of statistics to consider. Different cities and countries use different tests and test different subsets of the population. New York publishes the percentage of PCR tests administered at City sites that come back positive. This indicator is currently about 20%. While a frighteningly high figure, it does not mean that one in five New Yorkers are infected with Covid because the sample is very obviously a biased one. I have been saddened to see statistics used selectively and manipulated shamelessly to promote loaded messages through the pandemic. Some of this is nefarious, but official sources do not help their cause by using similar tactics.

 

The next binary is about safe practices. Of course no set of practises are completely safe, and no practise can guarantee you get Covid. It is all about odds, and should be explained as such. Instead we are offered precise guidelines, and many interpret these as a binary indicator of safety or danger. Last May I attended a Mets game masked and alone in a vast outdoor stand only after following intense protocols to gain admission. A week later I attended another game without any admission protocols and in a packed stand surrounded by unmasked people singing and baying loudly. It would be far better if the guidelines could have more nuance. It still feels very wrong to see vast loud and angry crowds packed in at football games. This is big money wielding an undue influence over public policy and rather an indictment of the intelligence of the attendees, but the binary communication of guidelines does not help. The same big money leads to reduced restrictions restaurants and bars, while I know from personal experience that alcohol is disastrous for self-discipline.

 

The next unhelpful binaries concern general statements about immunity and the pandemic overall. Herd immunity was an unfortunate term introduced in 2020, and still pervades conversation. There is no such thing as herd immunity; instead there is a level where susceptibility becomes less than voraciousness overall so the number of new cases diminishes. But people love to justify reckless behaviour by claiming that herd immunity has been reached. In the same way, no vaccine, booster or prior infection provides complete immunity; they simply improve our odds for a time. Similar logic can easily conclude that most binary claims about the end of the pandemic are rather meaningless. The pandemic will evolve and eventually diminish; it will not end.

A last common binary is about long Covid. We are led to believe that this is a specific additional ailment that afflicts a subset of sufferers. It feels far more likely that a spectrum is a better description, with Covid handicapping most of us to some extent long after we contract it. This weeks analysis of professional footballers whose average performance declined for several months after Covid bears this out. I know myself that walking up stairs had me out of breath for several months in 2020, and that there was more to it than wearing a mask. Yet I can hardly describe that as long Covid. 

 

I struggle to understand the reluctance to use the concept of probability when defining and communicating public policy for Covid. Most people gamble and indeed our screens are currently filled with inducements to gamble recklessly. So authorities must trust us to understand at least something about how odds work. Yet they cannot seem to trust us when it comes to health guidelines.

 

Occasionally something more helpful surfaces amid the cacophony. I still like the image of Covid as cigarette smoke, with contagious people equated to smokers. Being close to many heavy smokers in an unventilated space will very likely lead to some smoke entering my lungs, especially if the smokers are breathing all over me. But a few light smokers on the other side of a park won’t do me much harm, and any harm will vanish quickly unless my lungs are in really poor condition already. This feels an excellent image to understand Covid. Yet most of the time I am served up instead with platitudes are vaccination immunity and six feet being a universally safe distance. We can do better.

 

Covid is only an example of where binary thinking inhibits smart responses. For centuries sexuality was viewed in the same way, with predictably harmful results. What about foreigners? Communists? Christians? In practise many of us might share some features of all these categories but feel forced into binary positions.

 

The same simplistic guff applies to most discussion of criminality, dominated by a narrative of catching and neutralising the bad guys. Are most of us easily described as good or bad? If we are bad at a certain moment, why might that be? What is the best way to make us less bad more often? It is not difficult to find effective answers to these questions, but the lazy binary approach makes it much harder.