You and me better spend some time wondering what to choose—“Deal” (Hunter, Garcia)
I once read a bit of one of Trump’s books off a display table in a bookstore. If it was Art of the Deal, I would have been in my mid-twenties. The story I read stuck with me.
He’d owned some apartments, I visualized the suburban apartments in which I’d grown up, maybe I was naive but part of the story is that they were run down, so maybe I wasn’t too far off. The Donald could see they were going downhill, so he decided to sell. He found a buyer; like they say: one born every minute. The punchline is that he went back later (hard to imagine, Trump reflecting…), saw that the apartments had in fact gotten worse, and congratulated himself (thanks for your congratulations on me being right) on having made a smart move and, as I read it, in beating the buyer.
I recall wondering first about the tenants. Weren’t they supposed to be valued customers? Who was caring about them?
I had a pretty cynical view of business already but I was struck by Trump’s reason to be cheerful. Not just that he had gotten out and avoided a loss, but he seemed to be particularly pumped at having dealt his buyer a bad hand.
His glee came back to me when I heard another story on the radio in a series about “my big break.” The narrator had gotten an important gig, his first, writing a contract. Time-lines, deadlines and high pressure throughout, it was a thrilling story. He got the contract in just under the wire, but the next morning looking things over he discovered an error—a decimal point in the wrong place, a mistake that seemed like it would cost him millions of dollars (and maybe his future). All of that work for less than zero.
He called his boss, offering his resignation. He knew that wouldn’t cut it but that was where he had to start.
His boss told him (in essence): “OK, we’ll fix it, nice work.” “That’s business,” he explained. “We have a relationship with our business partners, they aren’t going to screw us over a typo. We may do business again. And we both have reputations.”
A good deal is one where all parties feel they’ve gotten a good deal, at least a fair one.
The movie Dead Zone keeps popping into my head. A Cassandra story, and we’ve had enough red flags re Trump for a Soviet style May Day Parade (thinking Trump and Putin in an open car…) but there are some uncanny parallels.
In the movie, the delightful Christopher Walken awakens from a coma with future sight. He shakes hands with a candidate for president and sees a nuclear holocaust [thinking about Trump’s reported fascination with the nuclear option].
In Stephen King’s story, Walken’s Cassandra not only sees the future but he can change it. In the end (spoiler alert) it’s the candidate’s rough handling of a baby at one of his rallies that dooms him and saves the world. So far, Trump has dodged that bullet…
Obama (asked by Seinfeld) has compared being President to playing football–rough game, sometimes mean, often unforgiving. And, yes, you need to be tough and strong, but you also need endurance, an ability to remain calm, to not lash out when you’ve been hurt.
Even in football, there are opportunities for art, but patience and preparation are needed to get there.
In business, sports and politics, your opponents are your colleagues, and even as you play hard and to win if you’re in it for the long haul (and we have to hope America is) along with patience, intelligence, understanding, diplomacy and an affinity for sweating the small stuff while seeing the big picture, thick skin and a deep core of decency are essential.
President Trump?
And you know I’m only in it for the gold–“Loser” (Hunter, Garcia)