Threading the Needle

I feel like I'm waking up from a nightmare, and am still getting used to the idea that Trump is no longer president. 

I've been thinking a bit about where we go from here, or rather... more about how Biden needs to 'thread the needle'. This isn't to say I'm giving advice, in that obviously I've never won an election whereas he is President of the United States.

More importantly, it's impossible to keep everyone happy, so deciding who to offend and how badly is a judgment call I don't feel qualified to make.

Nevertheless, my blog, my thoughts.

I keep thinking of an analogy one of the senior officers gave when I was in the Army. For full context - we love making little anecdotes and analogies to illustrate a leadership principle, and this was one of them. He said that leadership was like making ice cream.

He was talking about the old fashioned way - where you put the cream, sugar, and other ingredients in the container inside a bucket of ice (salted, I think?) and turn a crank around and around until it turns into ice cream. The point is this:

You always have to keep turning the handle, always have to keep cranking. When you stop, the ice cream starts to melt.

Same thing with leadership. It's not a one and done deal. You don't do a good job once, and then stop. Some of that is because people forget (sort of a 'what have you done for me lately?' type of attitude), some of it is that people may not have paid attention until they have an issue they feel strongly about, so they will look for signs that you're willing to listen only when they need to say something.

So... 

Biden is in a tricky position politically, because there are people on the right who are ready to take issue at the slightest thing. And there are far too many people who believed the lies, and think he stole the election. That he lacks legitimacy. And, apparently, that he works for China and is coming for their guns.

There are also people on the left, though, who will be very upset if we don't hold Trump (and Republicans) accountable. Accountable for the insurrection, accountable for mishandling coronavirus, accountable for all the lies...

Plus there's a sense that their political desires have been blocked for years (especially with Mitch McConnell and Obama), and they want to take this chance to finally put in place the things they've been prevented from doing.

Go too far in placating the right, and the left will be furious. Go too far in pushing leftist goals, and the right will push back.

Perhaps more importantly, the right is splitting. There are die hard Trump supporters, and conservatives who are upset by Trump and looking for an alternative. 

If the rule of thumb for change management is that you have 20% who support you, 20% who oppose you, and 60% who are largely neutral... and with good leadership and change management, you can shift those numbers so that 40% support you, 40% are still neutral, and only 20% oppose you (or something like that)... this is a golden opportunity to do exactly that.

To prove that your ideas are good, to convince people to continue supporting you... and maybe, just maybe, Biden can avoid the typical midterm losses.

(This seems like a long shot in the political world, but I think it's the holy grail for both parties. It's part of why they're so foolish when they do take power, since it feels as though they think their amazing policies will persuade the public to continue supporting them. Why worry about becoming the minority again - which is so far inevitable in our history - if you can get a lock on power and become the primary party, permanently? This may have happened in Japan, but I don't think it's likely to happen in America btw. We don't feel comfortable when one party has too much control, hence sometimes deliberately splitting tickets so that the party that controls one branch doesn't control another.)

Change management is always tricky, of course. It requires having a clear idea of where you want to go and how you're going to get there, as well as good personnel management and building a good team with the power and resources to get it done.

It relies on a certain amount of trust - political capital, if you will. And the current situation means Biden doesn't have that much political capital. At least, not among the general population. He's been in politics long enough I'm sure he has quite a bit among the powers that be.

So... crank the handle on the ice cream maker, get some easy wins with low-hanging fruit, build support for the policies that are going to be a more difficult fight... and try your best to make sure those policies will actually be effective, and do what you want.

I think about this in terms of Obama's push for healthcare. There's this big idea that a President has to accomplish a lot of his (or her, someday) agenda within the first 100 days. There's also the belief that if you can get something, anything, implemented that it's a lot harder to roll back.

Like with healthcare, that once you got something in place (even if it's badly done), you can work to improve it.

But...

An anecdote I know, but a liberal friend of mine got very upset with Obama's healthcare plan because it hurt her. I can't remember if it was too expensive, or what, but it definitely didn't do what she wanted. I know a lot of medical people said it was so complex that they had no idea what the result was going to be, whether it was going to help or hurt.

I'm not sure that was the best use of his political capital, and pushing for it definitely hastened some of the counterreaction and pushback.

And yet... We did discuss healthcare to a far greater degree then we had before. (I know Hillary Clinton worked on a plan back during her husband's term, and I don't know if it was because I was younger and hadn't been paying attention or not, but it hadn't seemed quite as essential back then as it does now. Maybe it's all the stories I've heard since, of people unable to afford insulin. Dying because they can't get the medical treatment they need. The medical debt and bankruptcy. Perhaps pushing the idea was a bad idea back then, or perhaps it opened the doors to discussions that have built more and more support for the idea that we really do need medicare for all.)

Quick side note - I do think of healthcare as a national security issue. I have heard of militaries in other countries where the HIV rate meant their combat readiness wasn't actually what it appeared to be on paper. I know the military has been concerned that too many potential recruits are overweight and out of shape. It's not just about what's best for our citizens, it's not just that businesses shouldn't be responsible for healthcare, and it's not just that our current system wastes resources, is inefficient, and has an impersonal market-based version of 'death panels' where people die because they can't afford treatment. It's also because we, as a nation, are weaker when our people don't have access to the best healthcare possible.

So anyways. Democrats control the presidency, the House, and the Senate. They have a chance to implement their dream policies, but they have to be smart about what they implement and how, and they'd better make sure whatever they do convinces the neutral majority that their policies really do work. Otherwise they'll probably be the (maybe inevitable?) loss in the next midterms, and it'll be a while before they get another opportunity like this.