Scott Adams's Blog, page 257

Reframing Our Problems

ISIS Reframing

The United States treats ISIS like a military problem, which it is. But I’ve written in this blog that it might be more useful to think of ISIS, and terrorism in general, as a persuasion problem with a military component. Framed this way, the military is just one element of persuading the other side to stop trying to kill us. 

Trump says that our allies and frenemies in the Middle East are the only ones who should be putting boots on the ground to fight ISIS. That approach is good persuasion compared to using U.S. troops, with a tradeoff of being less effective militarily. 

Evidently the world is no longer at risk of running out of oil, so the Middle East doesn’t have the same hold over us that it once had. Trump suggests it is almost time to slip out the back door and let memories of the United States fade. That is a persuasion approach because it is targeted at memory and perception. A military framing of ISIS, on the other hand, would involve permanent U.S. military bases in the region and ongoing operations that keep the U.S. at the top of the terrorist target list.

Economy Reframing

Governments tend to treat their economies like incentive problems, which they are to some degree. With that type of framing, the best a government can do is tweak tax rates. That tool seems brutish and antiquated in today’s world.

A better way to reframe the economy is as an information problem. Imagine how well the economy would operate if everyone knew where to go for a job, how to get there, and how to prepare. Unemployment is mostly an information problem in disguise. 

At the moment, most people are only capable of seeking and obtaining local jobs. Highly-paid professionals are semi-mobile, but the middle class and lower are not. So imagine the government sponsoring an app that fixes the job-seeking problem – really an information problem – for distance. The app could pair mentors across the country with job-seekers in a way that solves the distance problem via better information.

For example, if one carpenter in Alabama wants to get a job in another state, he has to figure out how to get there. For people at the low end of the economy, that task is daunting and probably cost-prohibitive. But imagine a network of mentors who can arrange for ride-sharing to another state as well as temporary housing at the destination. And imagine the mentors helping job-seekers find the right job training too. If you connect mentors who know how to navigate the world with the people who need jobs, good things can happen. 

I recently got involved with the UC Berkeley startup ecosystem. It is the largest startup environment in the country. Their biggest challenge is an information problem, which I have been working toward solving for the greater good. (You’ll hear more about that soon.) In Berkeley’s case, the information problem involves the need to connect the existing talent, knowledge, resources, and funding. All the pieces are there, but people can’t easily find what they need in all the noise, even in the same town. I recently provided seed funding to help fix Berkeley’s information problem. If our solution works, it can apply to other startup ecosystems. More on that later.

Just to put a size on this, Berkeley startups are solving for some of society’s biggest problems in the realms of healthcare, the environment, transportation, computing – you name it. Big, big stuff. 

Reframing Retirement

We tend to see retirement as a savings problem, and studies tell us that people are not saving enough. Not even close. So I think it makes more sense to reframe retirement as an expense reduction problem. Society’s goal should be to figure out how to create neighborhoods where the cost of living for retirees is cheap and the lifestyle is awesome. It would take hundreds of experts working together to design communities of that type. That’s an information problem.

Summary

Our approach to terrorism, the economy, and retirement are rooted in the past. There was a time when it made sense to see terror as a military problem, the economy as an incentive problem, and retirement as a savings problem. But in the age of the Internet, perhaps we should reframe those topics as persuasion and information problems. 

We have the tools to solve our problems if we frame them right. Otherwise we are fighting today’s wars with yesterday’s frameworks.

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Speaking of reframing, my book has lots of it.

The John Miller Thing

By now you have heard the news that back in the eighties Donald Trump sometimes pretended he was his own publicist and called members of the media to say good things about Trump’s projects. He used the names John Miller and John Barron. 

We also learned this week that the New York media always knew Trump made those calls himself. It was an open secret. And he still denied it. What-the-heck?

I won’t waste your time speculating about whether it was really Trump on those audio recordings that recently surfaced. Because it was Trump. Instead, I’ll give you some context so you can decide for yourself why Trump did it and why he later denied it.

For starters, the fields of PR and marketing are mostly about lying. Sometimes the lying involves leaving out information about your product’s flaws. Sometimes it means cherry-picking benchmark tests. Sometimes the pricing is intentionally misleading. And so on. Marketing – at its ethical best – is half truth, half lying. When Trump made those calls under another name, he was a liar playing a lying game. And he was talking to New York reporters, who have also been known to shade the truth. That was the context. 

Now ask yourself how Trump could have hired a PR professional who would have been better than the Master Persuader himself. We’ve already seen Trump distort reality so much that he’s on a leisurely stroll to the Presidency of the United States. He’s putting on the best display of persuasion the world has ever seen. It is entirely possible that no one has ever done it better.

So why would a guy with that skillset hire someone else to persuade journalists to write about him? It would be stupid to hire someone else for that job. It simply made sense to do it himself. And I see no reason to believe Trump cared about getting caught. Evidently it was an efficient way to get his message out, and he probably thought getting caught would be funny and create more publicity. It wasn’t illegal.

So instead of hiring someone less skilled than himself, Trump made the common-sense conservative decisions to pick up the phone that was sitting right next to him and knock-out some PR calls using his precision persuasion. Bam, done. And then he probably laughed about it. 

And do you know why New York journalists were more likely to write a story if they thought the fake PR person was really Trump? It’s because they wanted Trump to someday call again. Everyone likes to say they get phone calls from celebrities. No one is immune from it.

And there are other good reasons that Trump didn’t use his own name on those calls. I’m sure he didn’t want the phone call itself to become part of the story. Compare these two news stories: 

1. A Trump project turned out great.

or…

2. Donald Trump called to tell me how amazing he is.

When Trump made the calls posing as his own PR person, he took the phone call itself out of the story. That strategy seems smart. 

Will this new revelation about Trump change anyone’s votes? Most Trump supporters are trying to elect a hand grenade to lob into Congress. No one is trying to put lipstick on the hand grenade before throwing it. So I doubt this will matter.

People put a high value on consistency. More than you’d think. We don’t like surprises, especially from politicians. In this case, Trump is surprising no one. The bigger surprise would be if he had hired someone to do his PR calls for him. That would have been dumb. 

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If you think persuasion is an important skill set, you might like my book because it has words in it.

The Mother of All Campaign Errors

This is one of the biggest campaign errors you will ever see. It is a Clinton tweet that accidentally looks pro-Trump. 

Power, Persuasion, and Attractiveness

I created two surveys on Twitter to see which candidate for president of the United States has the most attractive supporters. My Twitter followers are mostly pro-Trump, and male, so I expected the biased result you see below. That didn’t make it any less funny.

These two surveys are statistically meaningless, but I’m willing to bet that a scientific poll of this type would show the same order of results, with Trump at the top. That doesn’t mean Trump supporters are actually more attractive. It just means you have been persuaded to think so, probably by a variety of factors. Here’s a little thought experiment to test this idea:

Imagine a male Trump supporter. He’s wearing a red Trump hat and he’s being interviewed on camera by a reporter. Now hold whatever image you have in your head for that person. All you know is that he is male, a Trump supporter, and he is wearing a Trump hat. Hold that thought.

Now imagine a male Clinton supporter. He isn’t wearing a Trump hat, so fill in that person’s clothing in your mind. All you know is that he supports Clinton. He too is being interviewed by a reporter.

Now imagine your Trump supporter and your Clinton supporter standing next to each other. Get a good picture of the two of them in your mind. Now here’s my question: If those two men were to get into a fight, who would win?

Most of you said the Trump supporter would win. That’s because you are reading this blog, and a lot of Trump supporters come here. But my educated guess is that persuasion is also at work. Trump’s language and imagery is all “big and beautiful and great.” His buildings are big and powerful. Trump is a big guy in a power suit wearing powerful clothing. He projects power, intentionally.

Clinton is more about fighting for the weaker members of society. Even her logo looks like a sign pointing to a hospital.

Attractiveness and power are correlated in our minds. Trump is creating a brand around power while Clinton’s brand is more about helping the disadvantaged of society. My best guess, as a trained persuader, is that each candidate’s branding leaks into your biased opinion of what the supporters of each candidate actually look like.

Just to be clear, I doubt there is any real difference in the attractiveness of voters who support various candidates. My point is that people have been persuaded to think there is a difference.

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On a different note, watch an untrained persuader flip Clinton supporters to Trump supporters in less than sixty seconds. I have tried this same method of persuasion in the past, also on the topic of politics, and had the same rapid results.

A few months ago I offered in this blog to flip a Clinton supporter to a Trump supporter on video in less than an hour. The truth is that ten minutes would be more than enough. I only said an hour so it sounded more credible.

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If you think Bernie Sanders’ supporters smoke a lot of weed, you should see my book because it has nothing to do with any of that.

About Those Trump Policy Details

Do you remember a few months ago when people were saying Donald Trump didn’t really want to be president? I don’t hear that now. Trump ended that speculation by becoming the presumptive GOP nominee. That’s one way to do it.

I also remember a lot of people calling Trump a “clown” last year. That was before he annihilated sixteen of the best candidates that the Republican party has ever fielded. That doesn’t seem so clownish.

Do you remember all of Trump’s vulgar insults from last year? It turns out that those linguistic kill shots were engineered for persuasion, and A-B tested at live rallies for effectiveness. Today, no one doubts how well those Trump nicknames worked.

Have I mentioned that when Trump was a child, his minister was the famous Norman Vincent Peale? Peale wrote a huuuuugely influential book called The Power of Positive Thinking. Critics said the book is full of unsubstantiated claims. (Sound familiar?) Critics also said the book uses well-known hypnosis techniques. Hypnosis? Hmmm. That’s the sort of skill that could turn a much-hated person into a president.

As a side note, Peale was good friends with Richard Nixon. That was probably a coincidence. It is probably also a coincidence that Nixon is credited with one of the most important hypnosis gambits of all time.  The gambit was so successful that it has Nixon’s name on it. It’s called “Nixon goes to China.” Maybe you’ve heard of it. That gambit might remind you of “Trump Goes to Megyn Kelly’s Interview.” Anyway, I digress.

My point today is that Donald Trump does not have as many policy details as his critics demand. And if a candidate does not have sufficient policy details, it might mean that candidate is a stupid clown who is not serious about being President of the United States.

Or…

It might mean that Trump is a skilled persuader who understands that people don’t make decisions based on policy details, logic, reason, common sense, or any other illusion of rationality. People are emotional creatures who rationalize their actions after the fact. Science knows that free will is an illusion. Trump knows it too. I say that about Trump with confidence because you can’t be a Master Persuader until you understand that people are fundamentally irrational.

So what do you do if you want to persuade voters but you don’t want to give policy details that are nothing but targets for critics? A trained persuader would create a situation in which everyone can see whatever they want to see. Trump literally takes both sides of the issues whenever he can. As a candidate, he’s a human Rorschach test. I might see in Trump a skilled persuader who always makes aggressive opening offers, and you might see a future dictator. We are looking at the same set of facts but we are primed by our experiences to interpret them differently. I study persuasion in all its forms and perhaps you watch the History Channel too much. Trump’s persuasion strategy depends on a growing number of voters finding something they like about him and fewer people reflexively making History Channel analogies. So far, it seems to be working. You’ll see Trump’s strategy fully-flowered over the summer. Watch for how many different reasons people offer for why they support him. That’s your tell.

From a business standpoint, Trump knows that Presidents make decisions based on current knowledge, not past knowledge. And by next year, a lot of what we think we know will be updated. If Trump said today exactly what he plans to do next year, it would be dumb. No CEO acts that way. No president acts that way either. It is useful to have broad policy preferences, but the details will change because of negotiations and because of newer information.

You also have to assume that a sitting President has more information than any of the candidates. At least I hope so. And that means anything the candidates say about fighting ISIS, for example, is probably under-informed. The same could be said for the economy because a president typically has more and better advisors than a candidate.

Here’s a little test you can try at home. In your mind, divide your friends and coworkers into two groups. One group understands a lot about making business decisions and one group has no business experience. Ask each of them individually this question:

How much detail should Trump provide on his policies?

A. Lots of detail so we know exactly what he plans to do.

B. We only need the big picture now because the details will be negotiated later, and the environment will change by then. Also, presidents have access to better advice and information than candidates.

I predict that your most experienced friends and coworkers will choose B. Let me know in the comments how it goes.

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If you think Norman Vincent Peale is dead, you might like my book that has nothing to do with him. 

The Apology Gambit

One thing we know about Donald Trump is that he doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t apologize when he is wrong. He doesn’t apologize when he is offensive. He doesn’t apologize for mistakes. As crazy as that sounds, I have blogged that it gives him a sort of superpower for negotiating. He creates an expectation that Donald Trump never budges even while he makes other people budge all the time. 

For example, on the news this morning I heard that Speaker Ryan said he would step down from managing the Republican Convention if Trump asks him to do so. I have to assume that managing a convention is a terrible job and not something Ryan wants to do anyway. Ryan is simply being smart, practical, and reasonable. But it looks to the public that Trump can influence Ryan while Ryan can’t influence Trump. That pattern is important to Trump. It sets the table for how people deal with him in the future. Specifically, it tells people they are going to lose when they try to negotiate with him. That sort of expectation hardens into reality over time and gives him a tremendous psychological advantage. Trump knows that. (Remember that he wrote the book on negotiating, literally.)

When you are Donald Trump, apologizing is a bad strategy, even though apologizing makes perfect sense for other types of leaders. Other leaders are not emphasizing their deal-making skills. Trump is playing an entirely different game of persuasion. 

Now here’s the interesting part. Given Trump’s reputation for not apologizing, he can create an unusual amount of attention if he ever breaks pattern. A sincere Trump apology – about anything – would control the news cycle for a week. So he can save that magic bullet until needed. 

Just for fun, let me tell you how he could use the Apology Gambit to help solve his biggest problem – his negatives with women. Specifically, Trump could apologize for all of the offensive things he has ever said about women. 

But to be persuasive, here’s the best form:

Example Trump Apology Gambit:

Trump: I have said a lot of offensive things about both men and women.

(This frames the issue as Trump insults everyone.)

Trump: But today I would like to apologize to women.

(There’s your news juice. He EXCLUDES men from the apology. What???)

I apologize to women for all the offensive things I’ve said in the past. I’m an equal-opportunity offender, but I understand the sensitivity when it crosses gender, and I apologize to women for that. No one respects women more than Donald Trump.

(Sincere apologies are persuasive.)

Trump: And I call on Hillary Clinton to do the same, and apologize for her mistreatment of the women her husband abused. 

(That’s the trap. In this hypothetical, Trump reframes the gender issue so we see that Trump is an equal opportunity offender, but only with words, whereas Clinton has an alleged history of mistreating women with actions. And Clinton can’t apologize for her alleged actions without admitting they are true.

Apologies are like catnip to the media. Journalists would make Trump repeat his sincere apology a hundred times in different interviews and debates, and they would prod Clinton to apologize as Trump suggested – which won’t happen. So the apology and the non-apology would become the dual headlines.

I’m not suggesting that Trump apologize to anyone. That is a political calculation. I’m only viewing this hypothetical example from a persuasion perspective, so you can see how some of the persuasion methods work. In this case you see several blended techniques:

1. Reframing (Trump reframes as an equal-opportunity offender, not a sexist.)

2. Sincere Apology (Apologies influence people because they demonstrate empathy.)

3. Pattern Violation (The media prefers man-bites-dog stories. Any break in pattern will control the news cycle.)

4. Deputizing the Pundits (Omitting men from the apology creates a men-versus-women contrast in which men don’t seem to need apologies. What? This would create lots of pundit chatter in which everyone competes to say some form of “Trump is an equal opportunity offender.” That’s what Trump wants you to know. Pundits will make his case for him so long as he only apologizes to women.

5. Redirecting Energy (Trump could move the energy – the public’s attention and interest – to the question of Clinton’s non-apology.)

Persuasion is a lot like engineering. It has a lot of moving parts that have to fit together just right. The complexity of it is completely invisible to the untrained. Trump’s persuasion is almost always tightly engineered, right down to his Linguistic Kill Shots (his insulting nicknames).

And when would be the perfect time for a Trump Apology Gambit? You already know the answer to that question because Trump primed you for it. Trump could do the apology during his upcoming Megyn Kelly interview.

Bam.

For new readers of this blog, please note that my political views do not align with Trump or with any of the other candidates. My interest is in Trump’s persuasion skills, the likes of which I have never seen.

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If you think this blog is written in the English language, you should see my book. That thing has all kinds of words in it. And most of those words are the good kind, with the exception of “moist.” No one likes that word.

A Few Observations on Clinton-Trump Persuasion

In no particular order…

The Paul Ryan Exchange

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said yesterday, “I’m just not ready to back Donald Trump.” That was an example of good negotiating. “Not ready” means he hopes to be able to back Trump someday, but only if Trump changes in some unspecified ways that Ryan wants. It gives Ryan leverage. It was a strong move.

But Trump responded with "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.” 

Checkmate, in one move. On this chessboard, a future President beats a Speaker of the House. And Trump makes you think past the sale again, to his presidency.

The Taco Bowl Photo

By now you have seen the image of Trump eating a Taco Bowl on Cinco De Mayo and saying, “I love Hispanics!” It was funny, provocative, playful, and viral as all get-out. 

But more importantly, every time it got retweeted and shared, more people saw a smiling Trump proclaim his love for Hispanics. Repetition is truth. Trump’s truth had a good day. That was a clean win.

Hugging and Kissing

I recently blogged that Trump’s best strategy against charges of racism would be to hug a lot of non-white people in public. Racists can’t do that. Racists can lie, but no one is convinced by words in this sort of situation. Actions, on the other hand, are usually unambiguous. If Trump had any trouble kissing non-white babies, it would be obvious to all. (See any video of Ted Cruz showing affection to his wife.)

You can’t fake physical affection when the cameras are rolling. Expect more hugging and kissing. That’s your truth.

Dangerous Donald

Opponents of Trump have started making the case that he is “dangerous” and “risky.”

You know who likes dangerous men? Answer: Everyone.

Seal Team Six is dangerous. George Washington was dangerous. Abraham Lincoln was dangerous. Women like dangerous men. Men want to be dangerous men.

"Dangerous” borders on being a compliment. When you need to thwart some enemies – such as a useless Congress, or ISIS – you want to send in your most dangerous fighter.

“Risky” is a slightly different vibe. I already blogged about “risky” being a bad choice when life is going well, and a good choice when you need to shake up a broken system. We’re in a broken system situation. Intelligent risk is what you want, not what you avoid.

Clinton’s Attack Ad 1 – Imagine President Trump

One of Clinton’s new attack ads features an image of the White House with “Trump” on the front. We are already over the shock of the anti-Trump content in the ad, so all that is new is that we spend more time imagining Trump as president. That is a hard fail for persuasion.

Clinton Attack Ad 2 – Republicans say Bad Things About Trump

Another Clinton attack ad features Republican foes of Trump saying bad things about him. The unintentional effect is to lump Clinton with the GOP establishment. It makes them look like they are on the same side against Trump. That plays perfectly into his outsider narrative, and it is another huge failure of persuasion.

Will a More "Presidential” Trump Still be Persuasive?

We expect Trump to move to the middle and act more “presidential” now that he has the Republican nomination in hand. You might wonder if that will make him less persuasive, given that the wild stuff he has done so far has worked well. Why change?

My best guess is that the public is primed for Trump to act presidential because it fits the “bad boy turns good” movie we all have in our heads. Everyone likes Han Solo, the tough talker with the heart of gold. Trump is making that movie-like transition now, but don’t expect him to go easy on Clinton. The Clinton attacks will be vicious, but Trump’s overall vibe will still trend (spottily) toward presidential. That will give both sides plenty to talk about.

Trump is acting presidential! Wait, what did he just say? No, he’s presidential again. Hold on, what did he just say???

It serves Trump well to have it both ways at the same time. So he’ll keep you guessing until Clinton is toast. Then he’ll go full-presidential. (Well, mostly.)

What Should Clinton Do to Defeat Trump?

People keep asking me what Clinton could do to thwart Trump. The simple answer is that she could get an advisor who understands persuasion, then try some different approaches (A-B testing) until she finds the winning message. That’s what Trump does, and apparently it works. 

By all indications, Clinton does not have a trained persuader on her staff. I’ve publicly offered to help for $1.8 billion, which is a bargain, since according to many pundits, defeating Trump would save the entire world. And I have a no-payment guarantee if Trump is elected despite my efforts. What do the anti-Trump folks have to lose?

Clinton’s Campaign Logo

Clinton’s logo is a big “H” with an arrow pointing forward. Someone on Twitter mentioned that it looks like a sign telling you where the hospital is. Once you see it, you can’t see it any other way. 

Clinton’s New Haircut

Fashion-wise, I like Clinton’s new hairdo. I think it is her best look. The only problem is that It reminds me of Trump’s haircut. 

You think that is a coincidence. It isn’t. (See Megyn Kelly.)

Clinton’s Wardrobe

I like that Clinton has her own fashion look that isn’t like anyone else’s look. That’s good branding, even if you don’t care for it personally. Being distinct counts for a lot.

Or at least I thought that way until some wag on Twitter noticed that North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, has the same style. Someone else on Twitter described Clinton’s fashion choices as “sci-fi emperor.” 

But overall, her fashion choices are helping her on the dimension of persuasion. It gives her a look that is all her own and it conveys power.

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If you think this blog post has grammar and punctuation, you should see my book. It’s full of that stuff.

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Disclosure: My political views to not align with Trump or any of the other candidates. Here are more details on my opinions.

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Update: My CNN appearance will be rescheduled to next week.

How Not to Make a Campaign Ad

The Clinton campaign came out with a new attack ad against Trump that features a number of Republicans trash-talking him. Let’s evaluate it for persuasiveness.

In the 2D world of reason and logic, the ad makes complete sense. Trump says he wants to be a unifier, and the ad shows a bunch of important Republicans saying bad things about him. They do not sound unified.

But no one cares about reason and logic.

Let’s evaluate the ad for its persuasiveness. 

Trump’s proposition is that the establishment is a bunch of useless losers and he can do better. The ad shows Trump being opposed by… a bunch of useless losers on the Republican side. Trump annihilated every one of them. And it wasn’t even hard.

Here’s what the ad does in terms of forming associations:

1. The ad lumps Clinton with the losing Republican candidates. They all share a dislike of the presumptive Republican nominee. Do they belong to the same club of establishment politicians who are ruining the country?

2. The ad shows that Trump is disliked by the Republican establishment. But that is his appeal, not his flaw. Trump already “fired” the losers in the video who are attacking him. Do you believe anything you hear from a disgruntled employee who just got fired?

3. When you remind viewers how many big-name politicians Trump has defeated, it makes him seem stronger.

4. Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans will see that Trump is an “enemy of their enemy” and bond to him.

On an emotional level, I experienced a wave of pity for Clinton while watching the ad. I mean that literally. Her advisers seem blind to the tools of persuasion. Other people who were blind to Trump’s powers of persuasion include Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Carly Fiorina. 

None of them will be your next president.

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If you think this blog has words in it, you should see my book.

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This is me sitting in my kitchen this morning where I write all my blog posts.

How to Do Persuasion Wrong

Now that Donald Trump has effectively wrapped up the Republican Party nomination, let’s talk about the general election. Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, has started to make the case that Trump is too “risky” to be president. That signals a shift from arguing about policy and experience to pure persuasion.

That’s a big deal. If you missed it, you missed the only important thing that happened this week. The rest is just blah-blah delegates, blah-blah, polls. Persuasion will determine the next president. As always.

Regular readers of this blog might recognize the “too risky” persuasion play. It was the play that took supply-side economics off the table during the Dole/Kemp campaign against Clinton/Gore. When things are going well, you don’t introduce risk. Jack Kemp wanted to overhaul the tax plan in the United States while the economy was working fairly well. It makes no sense to introduce risk when things are going well. As soon as Bill Clinton and Al Gore labelled supply-side economics as “risky” it was all over. It was a kill shot.

What you might not know is that the “risky” gambit gave Trump’s current campaign manager, Paul Manafort, one of his rare campaign losses. He was working on the losing Dole campaign. John Podesta was on the winning side, as a Bill Clinton insider, so I assume he knows the thinking behind the “risky” kill shot and decided to use it against Trump.

But…he’s using it wrong.

In 2016 the mood of the country is that things are trending in the wrong direction. That is the opposite of the country’s mood when Clinton/Gore ran for reelection and everything looked good.

The entire reason that Trump is so popular is that the public sees the system as broken and also sees no standard/normal way to fix it. When things are broken, and trending in the wrong direction, that’s exactly the time you want to introduce risk. 

In the investment world, young people are encouraged to take larger risks than retired people. That’s because you have plenty of time to recover from youthful mistakes but not as much margin for error if you are already retired. A smart investor tries to manage risk, as opposed to decrease it. Sometimes you want more risk, sometimes less. The high ground is knowing the difference. Trump seems to know the difference.

American voters have decided how much risk they want. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are the “more risk” candidates and they each outperformed expectations. Added together, the higher-risk candidates (Trump and Sanders) got far more votes than the safe candidate, Clinton.

I have said before that there are no trained persuaders working on the Clinton campaign. That comes through in all of their decisions. Their decision to use “risk” as a warning to the public at the same time the public is begging for more risk is an enormous persuasion error. It borders on a self-kill shot.

To be fair, Trump scares the pants off of about one-third of the public. So “risky” will hit home for those voters. The problem for team Clinton is that Trump has complete control of his persona. All he needs to do is act less risky for a few months to prove his campaign persona was all for effect. That process is well underway.

I would go so far as to say that John Podesta has set the theme for Trump’s upcoming interview with Megyn Kelly: Risky Business.

The public has learned a lot about politics and about persuasion during this election. It is about to learn about risk management, courtesy of Donald Trump. Watch him give a business tutorial on the topic sometime soon. That’s the right play, along with softening his edges going forward.

And hugging. Expect to see lots of hugging.

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Speaking of risky, be careful when you read my book. 

Clinton Versus Trump - Persuasion Scores

Today I’ll take you to the third dimension of persuasion to see how Clinton and Trump are matching up lately. I can’t make this post appear balanced because Clinton is making big mistakes on the persuasion dimension while Trump is being his usual skillful self. So the best I can do is remind you that my political preferences do not align with Trump or any other candidate.

We’ll start with Clinton’s new campaign slogan: 

LOVE TRUMPS HATE

Based on the slogan, I can tell you with confidence that the Clinton campaign doesn’t have anyone with a persuasion background helping with the big decisions. Here’s why:

1. Humans put greater cognitive weight on the first part of a sentence than the last part. This is a well-understood phenomenon. And the first part literally pairs LOVE and TRUMP. 

2. The slogan increases exposure to the name Trump. That’s never a good idea.

3. Spoken aloud, the slogan sounds like asking people to agree with Trump’s hate, as in “Love Trump’s hate (because Trump hates war, terrorism, and bad trade deals, same as you?). 

This is the sort of mistake you never see out of the Trump campaign. The slogan is pure amateur hour. It accomplishes the opposite of its intent, and you can’t fail harder than that.

Now let’s look at the “woman card” issue. Trump took the risky (but strategically solid) approach of taking the fight to Clinton’s strength – her appeal among women voters and among men who think it is time for a woman to be president. Trump branded her as a sexist who is hiding behind political correctness. It was a strong persuasion play and it put Clinton on the defensive.

Clinton responded by embracing and magnifying the accusation. She said that if fighting to make the world better for women is playing the “woman card” then you can “Deal me in!” The response was quick, clever, and catnip for her base.

You might remember Trump using a similar persuasion trick. Months ago, when Chris Cuomo asked Trump about the criticisms that he was a whiner, Trump embraced the whiner label, then amplified it by saying he was indeed the strongest voice for change. That’s exactly the right response. Clinton made the same play with “Deal me in!” So far, so good.

Then came the image of an actual “woman card” designed to capitalize on Clinton’s successful counterpunch. When something is working, you do more of it. But…maybe you should not do it…this way.

Let’s start with the fact that the design features a symbol from a restroom door. Just as the Clinton slogan unintentionally linked LOVE and TRUMP, the restroom symbol literally makes your brain associate Clinton with…a toilet.

You can’t make this up. When you saw that symbol, you thought of a restroom. it is automatic. 

But the biggest mistake was putting a magnetic strip on the Woman Card. That makes you think of a credit card. And that makes you think of debt. Or perhaps it makes you think of a transit card that Clinton had trouble using at the subway in New York. All bad.

You might ask yourself why the campaign did not go with a playing card model instead of a credit card. After all, “deal me in” is not typically associated with a magnetic strip. 

I’ll tell you why they didn’t use playing cards as their clever response. It’s because you would have to end up labelling Clinton the queen of – let’s say –hearts. And in cards, the queen is ranked below the king. That’s not so good if your opponent is a man…who lives in castles. 

When asked about the Woman Card issue, Clinton made an enormous error by saying she knows how to deal with men who go “off the reservation.” For starters, it is a racist reference. But the bigger issue is that it opened the door for Trump to say – as he has – that it is offensive to men and a sign that Clinton believes men need to be controlled, and kept on the “reservation” by…women.

Trump flipped the frame on her, as he does so well. The original frame for Clinton’s “reservation” comment was that Trump was the problem and Clinton has a lot of experience dealing with that personality type. Trump reframed the situation as if Clinton were saying that men in general need to be kept in line…by…women.

Historians will someday see Clinton’s “off the reservation” comment as one of the biggest mistakes in American politics. It might not play that way on the 2D level of politics where it seems little more than a bad choice of words. But it is far more.

At some point, expect Trump to remind the country that we have sons, too.

Prediction: On November 8th you will see a record number of men walking “off the reservation” to vote for Trump.

Update: Regarding those protestors at a Trump rally waving Mexican flags, ask yourself who supplied the flags. You haven’t heard that detail reported yet, have you? (Correct me if I’m wrong.) My filter says the Mexican flags came from a Trump supporter, if not the campaign itself. It was brilliant persuasion.

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If you think my predictions are crazy, you should read my book.