Several years ago, I wrote a column for a local newspaper about why promoting Entrepreneurship was important for the economy's future. The editor was so impressed, he asked what else I would like to write about.
Since this was at the beginning of the last election, I said my next column would explain why the people will be begging for Donald Trump to run. I never heard from the editor again and then Trump chose not to run after all (something about his financials).
The editor obviously thought this was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.
So why was I willing to go out on a limb about the Donald for that column?
First, let's understand that I wasn't saying that Trump would make a good president, that he would win or even that I supported him. I was just saying that people would be begging for Trump to run. The editor may have heard what he wanted to hear, but that is all I said.
Why?
The answer is that Trump spoke at the global level and he did it with big, but simple concepts. In particular, he spoke about how other countries see us. He talked about how they take advantage of our pieties, our political correctness, our petty fears, our blind spots and, most of all, the way we have backed off from a once fearless leadership.
We have gone from being a nation of doers, backed by laws, to one lead by lawyers who just talk about laws as a proxy for actual rick-taking leadership.
I have nothing against lawyers. We need them. But they live in a special, cautious kind of world. Just because they write and argue laws doesn't make them leaders any more than accountants should be CEO's or scientists should be salespeople. They could be, but not all of them.
Most politicians are lawyers and behave not, surprisingly, like lawyers. The better they are, the slicker their speech and we have gotten all too used to it. But once a plain-speaking, popular and successful person shows up, you see the difference.
My point was that once people hear Trump's big talk - his plain language schpiel - they will hunger for it. And they did.
My background with Entrepreneurs tells me that we see exactly the same with Startup pitches: a clear, boldly spoken pitch will win over a slick, incomprehensible mish-mosh that offends no one while sticking to some preconceived party line.
I can't say that I would actually support the Donald for President although I would definitely support for him long enough to keep the game of political refreshment going.
Trump may be the genuine bearer of America's future - unlikely as that may seem - or simply the jester who brings truth to the king's court. You decide.
What I can say is that, whatever he is, his is a voice we welcome.
In fact, people are begging for it.
My original article, predicting that Trump would be welcomed by public
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Since this was at the beginning of the last election, I said my next column would explain why the people will be begging for Donald Trump to run. I never heard from the editor again and then Trump chose not to run after all (something about his financials).
The editor obviously thought this was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.
So why was I willing to go out on a limb about the Donald for that column?
First, let's understand that I wasn't saying that Trump would make a good president, that he would win or even that I supported him. I was just saying that people would be begging for Trump to run. The editor may have heard what he wanted to hear, but that is all I said.
Why?
The answer is that Trump spoke at the global level and he did it with big, but simple concepts. In particular, he spoke about how other countries see us. He talked about how they take advantage of our pieties, our political correctness, our petty fears, our blind spots and, most of all, the way we have backed off from a once fearless leadership.
We have gone from being a nation of doers, backed by laws, to one lead by lawyers who just talk about laws as a proxy for actual rick-taking leadership.
I have nothing against lawyers. We need them. But they live in a special, cautious kind of world. Just because they write and argue laws doesn't make them leaders any more than accountants should be CEO's or scientists should be salespeople. They could be, but not all of them.
Most politicians are lawyers and behave not, surprisingly, like lawyers. The better they are, the slicker their speech and we have gotten all too used to it. But once a plain-speaking, popular and successful person shows up, you see the difference.
My point was that once people hear Trump's big talk - his plain language schpiel - they will hunger for it. And they did.
My background with Entrepreneurs tells me that we see exactly the same with Startup pitches: a clear, boldly spoken pitch will win over a slick, incomprehensible mish-mosh that offends no one while sticking to some preconceived party line.
I can't say that I would actually support the Donald for President although I would definitely support for him long enough to keep the game of political refreshment going.
Trump may be the genuine bearer of America's future - unlikely as that may seem - or simply the jester who brings truth to the king's court. You decide.
What I can say is that, whatever he is, his is a voice we welcome.
In fact, people are begging for it.
My original article, predicting that Trump would be welcomed by public
Why Donald Trump Could Win in 2012
By Alan Brody
We don’t want to elect politicians any more. We want to elect Superheros. At
least, that’s what we are looking for.
Ordinary politicians need not apply.
Guess what, Donald has started to look like one.
Needless to say, Trump could be doing this for the publicity
– he certainly has done it before. But this time its different. Not only
because he might be at a point where he means it - but because the public could
insist on it.
Trump may be tapping a perfect storm of trends that have
never really occurred before.
1. We
want mythic creatures – not politicians. Take Barack Obama – who had never
actually run anything, let alone a country, comes to us as the persona
prophesied by Bill Cosby and then Nelson Mandela and godmothered by Oprah
Winfrey.
Donald Trump comes to us by way of The
Apprentice, with his remarkably sensible progeny and godfathered by Mark
Burnett who somehow turned Trump the
bombast into Trump the Solomon of
managerial talent.
2. The
Age of the Entrepreneur. Nations are a product of who runs them and this country
is almost entirely run by lawyers. Once, we were about robber barons and lawyers. Then we
became mostly about corporations and
lawyers. Thanks to the Democrats, we are now labor and lawyers - as well as Wall
Street or high value companies that can afford to reward their employees
handsomely. Corporations are now global and they can sidestep the lawyers if they
choose. They no longer control the majority of jobs – small business does.
I In other words, if this country is not really about corporations or labor, all that remains are small business and lawyers. Since small business is by nature fragmented, that leaves us with lawyers. Obama is not merely a lawyer but an academic lawyer - a professor of constitutional law. He is he lacking experience in the rapid decisionmaking of executive leadership – although he is not doing a bad job. He has no idea how to create the future of jobs. Trump is not just a businessman, he is an entrepreneurial figure. He has invested in many kinds of self employment companies like ACN. These are often controversial but they also create masses of independent moneymakers. No politician knows about these kinds of businesses but they are the future. Politicians can only dream of a better GM. Good luck, there!
I In other words, if this country is not really about corporations or labor, all that remains are small business and lawyers. Since small business is by nature fragmented, that leaves us with lawyers. Obama is not merely a lawyer but an academic lawyer - a professor of constitutional law. He is he lacking experience in the rapid decisionmaking of executive leadership – although he is not doing a bad job. He has no idea how to create the future of jobs. Trump is not just a businessman, he is an entrepreneurial figure. He has invested in many kinds of self employment companies like ACN. These are often controversial but they also create masses of independent moneymakers. No politician knows about these kinds of businesses but they are the future. Politicians can only dream of a better GM. Good luck, there!
3. World Leadership. Once America stood
for something. It may have been wrong at times and it may have been called ugly
at times, but it was the alpha male of world countries. Not any more. We are
so inept at deciding our economic reality that we are both deeply in debt,
exporting jobs and importing people to do many of the remaining jobs. We are
ravenous users of energy but have neither the courage to live with the environmental
risk of our own energy and are terrified to stand up to the foreign countries that
sell it to us. It is quite possible to ague that at a moment when a bunch white
republicans came to the conclusion that a multiracial world just hates them, Obama
looked like just that person to put everyone not at ease. Heck he even got a
Nobel Peace prize just for showing up.
Yet his projection of the US on the world
is not leadership. Its comradeship. When Obama went to Egypt to show the Muslim
world a conciliatory face of America, he prattled on about freedom. Guess what –
they believed him, and two years later when they revolted, he stood back. His
one symbolic moment came with Qaddafi. Here was the one dictator that we
owed a bullet, whom nobody supported and Obama couldn’t make up his mind to take
him out. Instead, he waited until he could put together a posse of NATO
countries. This was not hasty leadership and the waste time cost us a quick
victory and has delivered a slow, bloody struggle instead. [This was written prior to Benghazi.]
True leaders have to pick a few moments to
strike fast and hard and he missed that. One could argue he did that with
health care but so far the results have been a joke. Our rates have gone up
dramatically and his supporters have been given free passes.
4. So Rich You can Trust Them. As voters
look at the future we are in a strange place. Wall Street has come back but
unemployment is still high. We now compete on the world economy and regular
politicians don’t seem to have a clue about dealing at a high level of strategy
in the world game.
[This was never completed after it became clear that editor x wasn't going for it.......]
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