Trump isn’t ‘normal’

Donald Trump AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Donald Trump AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Published Jan 22, 2017

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This isn’t normal. It’s a

statement we’ve been hearing a lot since Donald Trump was elected November 8.

We may hear it even more after he is inaugurated on Friday.

It happens to be true! An

orange-haired Manhattan real estate tycoon turned reality TV star with no

political experience becoming president of the US is in fact not normal, and

Trump’s behaviour during and since the presidential campaign has been pretty

anomalous, too.

Things also aren’t normal in

the sense that Trump has regularly and quite consciously broken with

long-established political norms. As my Bloomberg colleague Paula Dwyer wrote

last month:

The term refers to unwritten

rules saying that politicians in a democratic system should seek to win yet

still engage in fair play. These guideposts tell political victors to practice

self-restraint.

Norms aren't enforceable by

law, yet they're spoken of in almost sacred tones because they are seen as

buttressing American governance.

Trump’s clear disdain for

many of these norms is unsettling, and I get why people keep saying over and

over that we shouldn’t “normalize” his behavior. But they might want to be a

little more cognizant of the fact that not being normal is basically Trump’s

brand.

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Think about it in terms of

corporate strategy. If you’re entering a field with lots of competitors, you

could try to beat them by being more efficient or working harder at customer

service. Or you could define a new, wide-open field (ocean, if you prefer) and

conquer that. The latter, Roger Martin wrote last week for the Harvard Business

Review, is what Trump - whether he initially intended to or not - spent the

campaign doing:

What he was doing was

creating with precise and relentless consistency an entirely new category in

the minds of voters: the politically incorrect candidate. He has since

monopolised that new category.

Devilishly tautological argument

To establish the legitimacy

of the category, he made a consistent and devilishly tautological

argument: In the category of traditional presidential candidates, the

politicians are all politically correct. When they get in power, they fail you.

Hence you don’t want a leader in that category -- you want one in a new

category called politically incorrect presidential candidates. I have been a

huge success in business by being politically incorrect. Therefore: political

correctness = failure, and political incorrectness = success.

I’m not a big fan of the

phrase “politically correct,” because its meaning can be so amorphous. In this case,

though, it seems straightforward: Politically correct is the kind of behaviour

we’ve come to expect from successful politicians. Trump hasn’t behaved like

that, and it’s worked for him.

Martin is a veteran business

strategy consultant (he’s currently director of the Martin Prosperity

Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and used

to be the school’s dean), and that experience clearly shapes his analysis.

It seems to do a better job of explaining Trump’s victory in the crowded

marketplace of the Republican primaries than his narrow November win - but of

course the latter couldn’t have happened without the former.

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Martin has several

suggestions for those who wish to counter Trump’s appeal. They mainly have to

do with developing new strategies to win over voters rather than

criticizing Trump for being outrageous -- since that criticism only reinforces

his brand. I’m not certain that last part is right: Trump lost the popular vote

and is entering office with a historically low approval rating. The market for

his “politically incorrect” politics has limits, and criticism may help

shrink them.

Language of norms

Still, couching that

criticism in the language of norms and normality doesn't seem like a winning

strategy. There have been times and places when and where “normal” was no

insult -- think the 1950s U.S.,

when “The Organisation Man” was rampant, or the modern Netherlands,

where “doe normaal” (pronounced “do normaal,” and it means what it sounds like)

is something of a national slogan. But in the US, we have for decades been

celebrating upstarts, rule breakers and those who “think different.” It may be

that a Trump presidency will be enough to convince a large majority of

Americans that normal is actually just fine. Until that return to normalcy,

though, declaring that Trump isn’t normal seems like it’s mainly just free

advertising for him.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion

of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the

editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and

American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

BLOOMBERG

 

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