If the Vote Were Today

The existing two parties are broken and corrupt. Both of them.

Neither supports the well-being of the country. Both are self-serving- self-preserving. They run the candidate that will benefit the party, not the country.

Outside of those two parties, no candidate can win the Presidency. No third party has the power, wealth or infrastructure to win an election. Independent candidates have even less possibility. The best any can hope to do is fracture the leading party’s vote and, thereby, elect the otherwise runner-up party’s candidate. Indeed, it serves the “running in second place” party’s future to promote third party and independent candidates because it sucks votes away from the competition more than it diverts their own voters.

Trump is a Maverick. He doesn’t play by the rules. He is a game buster.

Neither party, neither the Republican party bosses and certainly not those of the Democratic party, like Trump.

There is an ancient proverb dating back to at least the 4th century BC, possibly earlier. Humans have regarded it as sage, and dangerous, advice. It says, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

If both the Republicans and the Democrats don’t like him, then maybe there’s something there we need to consider.

There is no doubt in my mind. Trump will be a disruptive President. He will change things.

Of course, there is great risk in this. Trump is not a safe bet. On the contrary, he’s a wild card.

As a sometimes Poker player, I know you play the odds most of the time. Most of the time, the better hand wins. It’s a competitive game and, if you expect to win, you learn the rules, learn the odds and play accordingly.

In the 1994 movie, Maverick, James Garner’s character does exactly that- for the first hour. Trump will need to do the same and play by the rules with the House and the Senate and the Supreme Court.

After that, well, we’ll just have to wait and see just as we’ve done with Obama, both Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and everyone else who’s been in the Whitehouse. None of them, not a single one, has a spotless record.

But I understand how Trump’s world works. When push comes to shove, I believe his core values, the lessons he has learned most deeply, will rule.

Having spent forty-five years in business, I understand that either you serve your customers and flourish or, if you don’t you eventually die. The business world, like life itself, is a ruthless world. I watched Motorola self-destruct because of its arrogance. Intel is staged to do the same. I know both of those companies intimately. And Microsoft, in spite of its seemingly unassailable position at the top of the personal computer pyramid, is now seeing serious erosion from the hand-held market by Apple and Android. The keyboard-based general purpose computer is in decline-count the number of no-keyboard versus keyboard-based computers at Costco on your next visit. Microsoft is a Johnny-come-lately to tomorrow’s tablet-style market. It takes a long time for a giant to fall, decades sometimes, but Microsoft has seriously stumbled. They’ve ignored their customers and the competition is filling the void with innovation, features and competitive prices.

Life is a struggle and business is predicated on the same precepts. You have to make effort, successful effort I should add, and you flourish. But if you make no effort, poor effort or the wrong effort, you don’t.

Don’t get me wrong- the world is complicated. Gifts are not just nice, they’re necessary. They’re what you do for your kids when they are young, and they are what you do for aging parents, those who are born without the ability to fend for themselves, and those damaged too much in life to help themselves. There are many circumstances where you help the disadvantaged. Charity has its place. But it’s a side place, not a core place.

The bottom line of life is that those who get up and work will generally be better off than those who don’t. While there’s still an element of chance in the crap shoot, that’s how you bet.

That’s how life works, and that’s what the business world has taught Trump.

Compete or die, is Trump’s world, the same as life itself. He knows that if you don’t innovate, evolve and become what your customers or constituents want, then you will disappear.

That’s how it is supposed to be. Nature says so. Just walk outside your front door and look. It is there all around you.

People talk about Trump’s failures. It’s true, some of his efforts have gone bankrupt. He’s failed. If that were all he had, I’d agree he’s a loser. But Trump has also had spectacular successes, and he continues to do so. Those failures bring lessons and, through them, he builds his later successes.

He learns.

Trump has been forged by the competitive world of business. He’s won and he’s lost.

He’s a fighter. When knocked down, he gets back up and tries again.

The U.S. Marines have a slogan: Improvise, Adapt and Overcome.

Trump practices it every day.

For the nay-sayers, I will add that I disagree with some of his ideas and beliefs. And I think he will not, for various reasons, be able to do all the things he says. Obama learned this fact. So will Trump.

But most important to all this is the hope that Trump’s election will disrupt the two parties, the Democratic Party because they lost, and the Republican Party because they also lost. Both will realize their leadership has failed. Both parties will do soul-searching and house cleaning so that another “Trump” doesn’t happen.

That’s what I really want, a rejuvenation, a re-crafting, a re-structuring of both parties.

We need a game changer.

And Trump is a Maverick. The world will never be the same.

Exactly!