There’s been a lot of buzz over the inability of President Trump to even offer a true deal to the Congressional Democrats, as well as to the Congressional Republicans (which I cautiously differentiate from Trump’s Base, which has been called the Party of Trump, and who constitute yet another entity in this sordid little drama). By true deal I mean something where everyone gets a little bit of what they want, and no one is happy.
For those readers who’ve avoided learning much about this repulsive and damaging little dance, Trump has been offering a deal that consists of I get everything and you get nothing, or, more literally, I get $5.7 billion to start building my wall and then I agree to sign a bill that reopens government, but with nothing for Dreamers, etc.etc.. This unconditional surrender offer is only a deal in the broadest of senses.
While ruminating over whether this might be indicative of the deteriorating state of Trump’s mind, aka dementia, which I do think is quite possible, it suddenly occurred to me that I’m overlooking the obvious.
Long time readers are well aware of my hobby horse concerning the Sectors of Society, and how the importation of the processes of one sector into another can have sub-optimal, even deeply undesirable results due to optimization effects. See the link for more, especially if you’re completely lost, or better yet read this executive summary: each sector of society (private, public, education, medical, etc) has goals peculiar to itself, and the processes it uses in pursuit of those goals are also optimized to those goals. Importing a process from another sector is problematic if the goals of the originating sector are at odds, as they often are, with the receiving. Thus we see rampant profit-taking by Pharma companies at the expense of patients, because the private sector believes it’s all about the profits (in itself a critical misunderstanding of the function of the private sector in society, but that’s another rant), while medical exists to cure patients.
And deal-making is a sector process! When we talk about deal making in the public sector, we’re talking about give and take, each side giving a little to get a little. But Trump’s deal-making has rarely, if ever, consisted of this sort of deal making. I suspect it’s consisted of two categories:
- Screw the little guy over. Trump contracts for and receives the goods, but refuses to pay the agreed on price. He pays partial price and dares the contractor to come after him in court, and if the contractor does, Trump spends him into bankruptcy. This behavior was well-documented during the campaign, and I suspect is the reason why Trump lost Manhattan, his hometown, so badly in the Presidential election: they’re very familiar with the bullying, edge of the line and often over it, tactics he employed, and they didn’t want to see that in the Oval Office.
- Finding a way to build the next building. Think about this process a bit: figure out what will sell, get the financing, buy the land, get permission to build[1]. Maybe I’m missing a couple of steps, but my real point here is that this has no resemblance to political deal-making. None.
We might even put this down to insufficient English vocabulary. We should have understood there is no connection between private sector deal-making and public sector deal-making. Different words would enforce this idea with a certain finality.
But in the final analysis, we’re simply seeing amateur-hour all over again. Trump doesn’t know how to broker a political deal, because his concept of a deal has nothing to do with political deal-making. He’s assuming he’s in the position of power, as he always is in point #1 above, and that everyone should collapse or possibly take him to court, although exactly how that would come about wasn’t clear at the time[2]. He’s not winning this shutdown showdown, but, whether or not he has the ability to recognize he must engage in give and take, he cannot because that third entity in this scenario, the Party of Trump, won’t let him. He’s pumped himself up to be the winner, the winner all the time, without ever making a concession[3], and if he makes a concession now, that base may crack.
And the funny thing is, he’s already made a concession. His previous estimates were in the $20 billion range. Why isn’t he emphasizing this to the press? My guess is that he’s just not that savvy in the political realm. But I think he’s lost the messaging window that he needed to pursue to make that point work. The electorate is solidly of the opinion that the Shutdown is Trump’s responsibility, and it’s damaging America.
How Trump is going to resolve this without burning off his hair is an open question.
1 A friend remarked yesterday that the Trump situation had suddenly become crystal clear for him: Trump got into this in order to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and since he needs permission from Russian President Putin to do so, he’s putting himself through all these contortions to win that approval. He observed that Trump is really a simple man, driven by money and building, with no regard for his obligations to American society. I’d just say Trump’s a broken man.
2 Trump is now being sued by a group of Federal employees under the banner of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.
3 Typical Trump boasting, of course. Soon after making that boast, he settled the Trump University class action lawsuit(s) for “… 80 percent to 90 percent of what they paid for Trump University programs.” I’d call that a tremendous loss of face for him.
