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
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.
Read also: Trump turned down $2 billion deal in Dubai
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.”
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