The Question Is Not How Trump Is Doing But How We Are Doing by Al Sikes

Mea Culpa. I was at least partially wrong when I titled my book, circa 2019, Culture Leads Leaders Follow.

A central point in the book: people who run for important elective office organize their brains and rhetoric around what is culturally acceptable. Or to put it another way, marketers of one sort or another and performing artists, not elected officials are primary influencers.

Successful candidates for the big elective offices begin by raising enormous sums of money. A high percentage of the cash is then spent on a polling firm to tell them what is or is not popular. If their budget is big enough, they will hire a marketing team of political specialists who prepare speeches, advertising videos and talking points for interviews. Mostly these are the steps of wannabes not leaders.

An overriding question is what has happened to America’s leadership class? What are the forces that have often turned it classless? Why are we now, the voters (judges) yelling at each other? Is dispassionately discussing public affairs even possible?

Cultural and political forces today often push toward the performative. How do you get above the noise of the day? Every candidate must cope with this reality and many of the most promising choose not to—performative politics as predation.

Enter President Donald J Trump. He knew, intuitively, that he had to push the line, all lines. The successes of his business and TV career bore his name. He was the brand and his brand bore no relationship to conventional politicians who generally earn their reputations by giving speeches, winning elections and holding offices. Trump to the political world, “you’re fired”.

Trump’s only questions related to how far he could go and to what extent he could create the narrative for his various campaign promises. The narrative choice was brilliant: Make American Great Again (MAGA). And he began.

In his most recent election, he used President Biden’s carelessness at our southern border to rebrand immigrants. Through the generations, immigrants enjoyed a favorable image of striving for the betterment of their new home. Now Trump was rebranding them as toxic. He appropriated the worst, drug dealers for example, and accused the powers that be of facilitating their drug pushing.

Job frustrations? It’s not your fault the foreigners are taking your jobs. Or, if you are a white male, you are the target of discrimination. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), an awkward attempt to make up for past sins, became today’s sin.

Wealth? It is reported that 10% of the adult population owns 50% of America’s wealth. Trump, sensing an underlying anger promised no taxes on tips or social security income and recommended tariffs on foreign goods to win back jobs.

Sex? The high priests of the culture had decided to normalize and promote conduct many think is wrong. He skipped across the political perils of abortion while using sexual apostasy as a targeted weapon.

And on and on. And while he got a lot of the facts wrong his receptive audience did not go to the library to check his references. Fact-checking that should matter, seems a remnant of an earlier era.

Plus, what Trump called the Mainstream or Lamestream Media was vocally nonplussed by his antics, and they often performed as if he had scripted them. After all they were perceived as pushing open borders and sexual immorality. They became the opposition.

What followed were attempts by Institutionalists to criminalize his conduct. While there were grounds for impeachment, his loyal base saw him as a victim of an attempted coup. While hard to pinpoint, it is clear that a tipping point had been reached—politics as we had known it was over.

In the Republican Party that became clearer as two institutionalists, Niki Haley and Ron DeSantis, were defeated. In the broader electorate, Trump was sufficiently popular for the electoral math to work. He was, of course, aided by a Democratic Party leadership class that was so fearful of “next” that a low-functioning incumbent President controlled much of the nominating apparatus.

And here we are. America has a President who takes pleasure in making his opponents livid while calling them “lunatics”. We are more than a hundred days out and while many voiced 100 day report cards, I simply worry about how Trump has affected both the social and political culture because yelling at each other across hardened barriers is not characteristic of a healthy democracy. I have never been part of a significant success that was not collaborative.

I am not a sociologist, but I have been working at the intersection of government and business for more years than I would prefer to count. I keep trying to see a new way forward, but in my mind it is hard to find. A catastrophe of some sort might be the only enabler; and who knows what it will enable.

Warren Buffet, the supremely successful founder and leader of Berkshire Hathaway, understanding the importance of his company’s successful culture, chose Greg Abel as his replacement. According to the late Charles Munger, Buffet’s longtime partner: “Greg knows the companies culture.” Indeed. Success is maintained by a healthy culture.

So what is it about our political culture? We now have a President who disdains collaboration. Here are some questions I think we should engage:

1- Has what I will call Trumpism become our political culture?

2- Have Judeo-Christian values lost their force?

3- What about organized religion? Has it become disparate affinity clubs attracting fewer and fewer as many of its leaders prove to be power seekers not healers?

4- Has language lost its influence? Do intemperate words and uses make any difference? Was America great or at least better when the F—word was not the defining adjective?

5- Who do we believe in a world defined by detachment? Artificial Intelligence? Algorithms? Neighbors?

We are lost. Who will we be when we are found again?

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.