Go Home America, You’re Drunk

That’s how I’ve felt watching cable news since the election. Some of the assertions people are making are absolutely bananas. I keep wanting to shout, “Good God, shut up. You are DRUNK!”

They aren’t drunk, of course.

But they are under the influence.

This is Your Brain on Story

A friend of mine used to produce a business television program. I once teased him about the tendency to attach great meaning to small changes in the stock market. One point up: “What accounts for the optimism, Bob?” One point down: “Why are investors so negative, Bob?”

My friend shrugged.

“What are we supposed to say? The market was up today on the strength of more shares bought than sold?”

Human beings are story junkies. We are wired to seek meaning, to look for patterns and to use narratives to interpret events and make sense of the world. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt likes to say, “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.”

Our interpretive abilities have improved through the years (as far as I know, not one virgin was tossed into a volcano as a result of Donald Trump’s election) but we have a ways to go. I’m sure we’ve all known people who are paralyzed by flawed stories they tell themselves.

“I’m unlucky.”

“I shouldn’t go for that job. Things like this never work out for me.”

“I lost the popular vote because of 5 million illegals.”

Increasingly, psychologists use “narrative therapy” to help patients tease out and revise these damaging fictions. Maybe we need political narrative therapy. Because almost nothing triggers our craving for story more than politics.

The tendency is most vividly expressed by a candidate’s hard-core supporters, the ones who actually believe he’ll shake dreams from the trees and squeeze magic from the clouds. Obama’s 2008 election was historic, of course, but the way people talked, you’d have thought unicorns would soon be prancing about the (now healing) planet and mermaids frolicking in the (no longer rising) seas.

God knows we saw plenty of it in 2016, too. At some point last year I commented to a friend that some of Trump’s supporters, the true MAGA-heads, seemed a little divorced from reality.

“Divorced?” She replied. “I’m not sure they’ve been introduced.”

The truly besotted, however, aren’t the problem. The real mischief is with the people who think they’re immune. They roll their eyes at the true believers and boast about their tolerance for the high-test stuff.

OMG, are those people blind? Can’t they see that unicorn is just a goat with a waffle cone glued to his forehead?

They’re like the drunk insisting he’s fine to drive.

I’m not impaired by narrative! I can do that MSNBC hit.

The truth is, elections are always more prosaic than our clever narratives suggest. A candidate’s coalition has every kind of voter: the passionate, the reluctant, the straight-ticket, the hater of the opponent, the eeny-meeny-miney-mo-er.

But, as dry facts are boring and unhelpful, we take a big ol’ swig of narrative, and next thing you know, we’ve got the “Angry White Man,” or “Waitress Moms,” or the “Year of the Woman” (only applicable when Democratic women are winning) and headlines that read “Whither the [insert whichever group is supposedly withering]?”

Every cycle we elevate the importance of one faction or party, while we stand over another, poised to declare it dead and go rummaging through its pockets. We oversimplify, over-read mandates, and generally extrapolate our way into all kinds of idiocy.

How can you tell when someone has been indulging in too much narrative? Easy. His sentences begin with phrases like “I think people . . .” Or “Voters wanted . . .” Or “The mood out there is clearly . . .”

How Did We Get Trump?

People’s craving for narrative was higher than usual after the 2016 election. This is natural. The more stunning the event, the greater our desire to find meaning in it. No matter what side you were on, Trump’s election felt like a big event.

Everyone found their dealer (MSNBC, Fox, Breitbart, Vox . . .) and mainlined stories to understand the bizarre outcome. Comey. Racists. People tired of being called racist. Sexists. People tired of being called sexist. Russia. Jupiter in retrograde. And each narrative has a crust of truth, so you could just pick your favorite from the jumble.

Defending Trump on an ongoing basis, however, requires more than a tidy explanation for his victory.

Trump’s most ardent supporters don’t have it too hard. For them, everything can be explained by one of two narrative premises:

(1) If Trump did it, it’s good.

or

(2) If it’s not good, Trump didn’t do it.

For (1) they simply add a narrative explaining why X is good. For (2) they lay down another narrative placing blame with anyone but Trump. Rinse, repeat. The only practical disadvantage to this worldview is that Trump defenders generally can’t tell you if X is “good” or “bad” until they know if Trump did it.

After the Charlottesville debacle, for example, Trump defenders mixed a cocktail with “Trump did it, so it must be good” as the base, then grabbed their bottle of Trump as Unlikely Antihero. Trump became the caped crusader, fighting political correctness. Next thing you know, we had assertions like this one from Twitter: Trump is going to emerge from this week more popular than ever before. People are sick of the #FakeNews!

There was jubilant toasting when a post-Charlottesville poll showed 62 percent of Americans agreed with Trump about Confederate monuments. See? We KNEW it! The tipping point is nigh. (The tipping point is always nigh, by the way).

That’s some top shelf Antihero you’re drinking, my friends!

The mood turned sour a few days later, though, when a poll showed a paltry 28 percent approval for the president’s response to the Charlottesville rally. The Antihero narrative was not capacious enough for people who agree with Trump on an issue, but don’t generally approve of his behavior.

Fortunately, just as they were starting to sound like the muttering drunk at the end of the bar, the Subject-Changer-In-Chief gave them something new to talk about: the Pelosi-Schumer deal.

In defense of this move, Bill Mitchell, the Baghdad Bob of Trump fanboys, started with the “Trump did it, so it must be good” truism, to which he added a shot of 3D Chess narrative: “Why did we elect a great negotiator if we were going to freak out every time he negotiates”?

Sean Hannity went with the other truism (“If it’s bad, he didn’t do it”) and topped it off with the Blame the GOP Leadership narrative: “The failure by Congressional GOP to govern is forcing President Trump to seek alternative ways to get things done.”

* * *

It’s a more complicated matter for Trump’s soft defenders. They must resort to elaborate cocktails to explain Trump’s actions. I hate to pick on Ben Domenech, because he’s a smart guy, but in two recent articles about Trump’s “pivot” to the Democrats, Domenech outlined a fine recipe for a pro-Trump narrative cocktail. It includes:

Trump Mind Reading: Trump “doesn’t like McConnell and Ryan, never did. He likes Chuck Schumer, and knows him, and thinks he can work with him.”

The Despised GOP/Establishment: “The country largely hates the GOP.”

What The Voters Wanted: “A combative, populist non-ideological president not hung up on small government budget principles who infuriates the left and says anti-politically correct things and delivers on judges is, as it turns out, what ‘his own party’ wants.”

Blame the GOP Leadership: “Congressional Republicans . . . had the illusion that voters who elected them were voting for the things they like . . . but it turned out to be wrong, and Trump proved that it was wrong . . .”

To the Victor Go The Spoils: “He beat them, and they couldn’t beat him. The party didn’t go for any of the other candidates because they wanted him.”

As usual, each narrative has just enough truth to be credible. But not enough to make them actually, you know, true.

Let’s start with What Trump Thinks.

I don’t live in Trump’s mind (I try to be a good person so I don’t end up there someday), so I can’t say for sure whether Domenech is correct, but I do know two things:

As a rule, Trump defenders are horrible mind readers. How do I know? Because they’re constantly reading my mind by telling me why I don’t like Trump, and they’re always wildly, comically wrong.

Trump likes Schumer? Well, maybe. But he liked Jeff Sessions once, too.

As for the Despised GOP: Since 2010, the Republican party has netted a dozen Senate seats and more than 60 House seats, 12 governorships and more than 1,000 state legislative seats. So maybe Republicans are “despised,” but they seem to have muddled along pretty well before Trump became a Republican.

This brings us to the To The Victor Go The Spoils narrative. In saying “Trump beat them, and they couldn’t beat him,” Domenech is echoing a familiar refrain.

I’m sorry to have to do this. I know it’s not fun. (Trust me. I already have it on good authority that I’m a total buzz kill). But it’s long past time to inject some reality back into the analysis. A quick refresher on the 2016 election:

Trump’s margin of victory came down to 80,000 voters across three states.

Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million against an unpopular Democrat in a change election.

Trump was the weakest post-incumbent challenger in 200 years.

Trump entered office with historically high negatives. It seems what some voters find attractive others found extremely repellant. (Who knew?)

More people voted against Trump than any winning presidential candidate in history, and he won a lower percentage of the vote than any winning candidate in nearly 40 years.

He was outperformed by down-ballot Republicans virtually everywhere.

Senate candidates in every competitive race but Missouri and Indiana virtually every Republican member of Congress ran ahead of Trump.

Let’s dwell on that last point for a moment. Yes, Trump is more popular than “Congress.” But “Congress” is never on the ballot. People don’t go to the polls to vote for “Congress.” They vote for their member and these men and women outperformed Trump.

And since it seems we’re re-litigating the primary, Domenech’s argument that, “they didn’t go for any of the other candidates because they wanted him” doesn’t hold up very well either. Remember: Trump got 14 million votes in the primary; 16 million people voted against him and for someone else—more than any nominee in history. A narrow plurality is good enough to win the nomination, but it doesn’t speak to any large-scale movement or mandate.

As for substance, Domenech says people voted for “a combative, populist, non-ideological president not hung up on small government . . . who infuriates the left and says anti-politically correct things and delivers on judges.”

It’s probably true that “the voters” were more pragmatic than elite conservatives thought—provided that when we’re talking about “the voters” what we really mean is a segment of the electorate largely composed of the white working class.

Support for Trump among this voting bloc is, no doubt, one of the the most fascinating aspects of the election. These voters matter, and they deserve the attention they’ve received since the election. (Though it has brought out the media’s lamentable tendency to act like anthropologists studying some ancient tribal culture).

But it’s wrong to refer to anyone as “the voters,” because there is no such thing. In a two-party system, both parties are coalitions of factions. The coalitions have the complexity of a rainforest ecosystem. Touching something over here can make something go to hell in a handbasket over there. What seems durable often proves ephemeral and fragile. (Obama Coalition? We hardly knew ya!)

Trump working with Pelosi and Schumer might make sense as part of a larger, carefully choreographed triangulation strategy, á la Bill Clinton. But since the buck must always stop somewhere else with Trump, we also get the Blame the GOP Leadership narrative.

Building a coalition doesn’t involve working with one group until the going gets tough (or you decide they have not displayed sufficient fealty). As Noah Rothman points out, “Bill Clinton was cautious not to undermine his party’s leaders. He was under no illusions that Republicans would somehow be better stewards of his presidency than the opposition party.”

A number of people on the right seemed delighted with Trump’s seeming betrayal of congressional Republicans. Some believe ripping the GOP to shreds is the right thing to do because Trump wants to do it. (“If Trump does it, it is good.”) Others, however, are under the influence of the Burn It Down narrative. To this crowd, the GOP is a relic not worth fighting for, and its leaders
don’t understand that the The Voters want big government and someone to Get Things Done!

Can Trump further fracture the GOP and make its leaders less popular? Of course. His spirit animal is a polecat. He’s never happier or more animated than when he is squared off against an opponent he can belittle. And he’s got the bully pulpit now. (Has that pulpit ever been so aptly named?) He can make a great case against the GOP leadership.

I can make a great case against the GOP and its leadership, too. I could do the same for the Democrats and their leadership. Both parties are coalitions, made up of factions with conflicting desires. Those factions are made up of voters, also known as human beings, with all their attendant sins and flaws.

It strikes me that acknowledging this fact might be a good first step toward getting past the horrible, intractable partisanship infecting our politics. For now, though, people seem more inclined toward the “burn it all down” view. And whatever else you want to say about him, Trump can certainly help that along.

Kick Six Thinking and the Don Shula Rule

Trump’s victory was astonishing and unexpected and unconventional. In some ways, it was like the last second of the 2013 Iron Bowl, when Alabama missed a field goal and Auburn’s Chris Davis grabbed the ball and ran it back 108 yards for a touchdown. It was an amazing finish to the game, unexpected and exhilarating. Fans will talk about the so-called “Kick Six” forever.

It would have been absurd, however, for Auburn coaches to believe the victory conferred some kind of lasting magic on the team, or that they should build their next season around a repeat of the Kick Six play.

I suspect Auburn abided by the Don Shula rule: Take 24 hours to celebrate a victory or rend garments over a defeat, then look ahead to the next challenge.

In some ways, Trump’s victory was a Kick Six, an astonishing outcome. But as the kids say: Cool story bro, tell it again.

If the pro-Trump political class abided by the Don Shula rule, what would happen?

They would ignore the OMIGODness of Trump’s victory (except where specific data proved useful) and acknowledge that the president is a man, not a magician. Twenty-four hours after the election, they would have taken a gimlet-eyed view of the facts.

With minds cleared of the fog of surprise, Trump’s political priorities would have been obvious: He needed to lower his negatives and broaden his coalition. Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction.

Republicans would have been chastened by Trump’s narrow victory in what should have been a pretty easy year for a Republican candidate. Because while the GOP could always get lucky and get an opponent as weak as Clinton again, they probably shouldn’t count on it. Republicans also would have taken a hard look at why down-ballot GOP candidates so uniformly outperformed Trump.

And while no strategy would contemplate abandoning the white, working-class voters who pulled Trump over the top in the three decisive states, hyper-focusing on one part of the coalition would be like treating field-goal return plays as the future of Auburn’s offensive schemes.

I’ve seen precious little discussion along these lines. Instead, people behave as if Trump is some kind of magician who will always pull the rabbit out of the hat. If you believe that, I have a luxurious, classy casino in Atlantic City to sell you.

I suspect I know why there’s so little reality-based thinking: What’s the use? It’s not as if you could share it with the president. He’s convinced millions of illegals kept him from winning the popular vote.

The story he’s reading is just too good to put down.