FIRING COMEY AND THE METAMORPHOSIS OF DECISION DESIGN

Trump's decision-making heuristic erodes logic and norms, often governing by transient whims even when it threatens his own longer-term self-interest.

The recent fallout from Trump's decision to fire FBI Director Comey illustrates a fundamental shift to the executive decision-making paradigm away from the established cultural standards of mature, stable, democratic republics. 

The above framework depicts the starting point for decision analysis based on historical precedent and formal constraints to the decision-maker's authority. It does not suggest that these starting points always prevail; individual decisions may ultimately violate laws, logic, norms, and personal interest for any number of reasons. The shift I'm trying to illustrate with Trump, rather, is to the baseline, to the going-in assumption. Whims are the foundational element to Trump's decisions, with homage to logic and norms factoring in only when they support said whims. Indeed, Trump's repudiation of norms is one of the stated reasons his supporters elected him (swamp draining &etc.).

This is an innovation made possible, I think, by Trump's personal mythology and near-infallibility with his base. Oh, and it's terrifying. Formal constraints are subject to deep strain when in contradiction to informally-established normative behavioral parameters. Just think of the variations between, say, your corporate handbook and how things actually work day to day in the office. What has a greater impact on behavior? Similarly, logic, like its cousin reality, is often less-believable than fiction. How our formally-codified precedents hold up to direct pressure on norms and logic is, perhaps, the next big question. 

INAUGURATION 2017: SARTORIAL SUBTEXT

The Obamas and the Trumps, Inauguration Day 2017.

Melania Trump's inauguration ensemble perhaps bore an even greater debt to Jackie Kennedy's than her RNC speech did to Michelle Obama's. The internet is a-flutter with comparisons; there would have probably been even more had Kellyanne Conway not showed up dressed as Paddington Bear.

Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy at his Inauguration, 1961.

It's a move reflective of her husband's campaign's nostalgic overtones and an aggressively "I'm-the-first-lady"-looking look, and yet--intentionally, I hope--her choice can also be interpreted as an olive branch, and perhaps even subversive.

Jackie Kennedy was a democrat whose famous powder-blue suit perfectly matched her husband's tie; collectively they recognized yet muted the traditional blue of their party in the act of becoming President and First Lady of the entire American populace. 

In contrast, Donald wore unadulterated Republican/MAGA red--and as a republican First Lady, the same powder blue carries different connotations. I'd read Melania's Ralph Lauren more as a Declaration of Independence from her husband if (in a coordinated effort that just had to be intentional) Michelle Obama wasn't wearing burgundy in contrast to President Obama's traditional, Democratic blue tie.

Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Trump today.

It has to be said that if you crop out Donald, it's a moving, beautiful image. Two powerful women, an African American and an immigrant, embracing one another warmly, clad in the color family of the other's party. It gives a sense of respect without deference, of a unified appeal for unity. They ooze FLOTUS glamour. It's worthy of the cover of Vogue.

It's also a sentiment that echoes Michelle's choices for both of her husband's own inaugurations. She wore yellow--the third, and only neutral, primary color--in 2009, and, along with her daughters, shades of violet in 2013--the secondary product of mixing red and blue.

The Obamas at his Inauguration in 2009.

Mrs. Obama with her daughters at her husband's Inauguration in 2013.

Maybe it's because I want to see it, to find something positive about this miserable day and the gut-wrenching Presidential ascension of a man whose behavior would have gotten him fired from basically any other job in this country instead of an experienced, resilient woman (who also wore Ralph Lauren today) succeeding a leader of such dignity and intelligence, but Michelle and Melania gave me a twinge of hope, which, as I looked closer, sartorial details seemed to support. It was not just Melania's suit, but also her gloves and shoes that were icy blue. The jacket has an enveloping high neck. Her diamond earrings reflect and appear the same color as her gloves. It's unilaterally, unequivocally blue, while if you look closely, Michelle's burgundy has flecks of navy, as well as navy trim around the collar and sleeves. Burgundy is the general impression, but it's a patchwork of colors creating it.

For a woman wrapping up her tenure, the crew-style top and short sleeves evoke a readiness to get to work, which is, of course, what we all need to do. And Melania seems, in, albeit, a quiet way, to want to help. With this outfit, she's fully accepting her supportive public role yet intimating that her own private opinions can differ from her husband's. I hope I'm right.

POLITICAL MYTHOLOGY AND GOAT YOGA

When I read this article on "Goat Yoga," in the New York Times last week, my immediate thought was, this is it, this is why Donald Trump won the election. We thought freedom and human rights, diversity and respect, different and weird had already won--we still had some unconscious biases to weed out, sure, but we were comfortable enough that at least formally, consciously, aspirationally, America was a country of reason and respect and humanism for us to allow ourselves this kind of kumbaya capitalist decadence. 

Of course it's more complicated than that, but it was my first thought. It falls in line with numerous Rome-analogy pieces like this one from March 2016--disturbingly far in advance of the election--that are taking on a knew significance now, as the hogwash but powerful Mythology of Trump bleeds into full-on garish hyperreality.

Goat Yoga has everything you could possibly want in a news story right now to comfort the reeling elite liberal ego: off-beat intrigue, factual reporting, adjectives like "hummocky"; a hip way to get healthy exercise with a global internet community and a mantra of inclusion (despite its definitionally-expensive actual physical requirements).* It's comfortable and warm; the mere existence of such an article leads us to feel like we're living in a Hillary Clinton world. It's the very feeling that, perhaps, prevented us from actually living in one.

We need a better MacGuffin, sadly, one farther removed from detail and fact. As different as Trump's and Obama's objectives and ideologies, and as measured and pragmatic as the latter has been as President, as candidates, they won the same way: with a general, blanket feeling you could twist to build your own narrative on. It's a rhetorical platform you can use to incite discord as well as harmony, for anger and fear as for hope. They both, notably, tapped into a fervent desire for change. We now need a new mythic counter-mechanism, another unifying, positive emotion with the power to override things like goat yoga for our attention. I'm not sure yet what the the right MacGuffin-myth is--i think, maybe, Bernie hit a chord close to it--but I have my eyes peeled. 

*When I re-read this sentence I realized it sounded like Stefon from SNL reviewing the city's hottest new club, but decided to stand by it, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

STRATEGIC DESIGN AND THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

One of the most important ideas in Dan Hill's Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary is that of a MacGuffin. It's a Hitchcockian appropriation, a critical plot trigger with little to no value in and of itself. Hill explains, first quoting Hitchcock:

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"'A MacGuffin you see in most films about spies. It’s the thing that the spies are after. In the days of Rudyard Kipling, it would be the plans of the fort on the Khyber Pass. It would be the plans of an airplane engine, and the plans of an atom bomb, anything you like. It’s always called the thing that the characters on the screen worry about but the audience don’t care… It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story.' 

According to the British Film Institute’s Mark Duguid, the MacGuffin, is 'the engine that sets the story in motion.' In Notorious, it’s uranium ore hidden in wine bottles. In North by Northwest, it’s the entirely vague 'government secrets.' There is a long history to the idea of the plot element that kick-starts and drives the narrative but is somewhat inconsequential in the end. More obviously, the golden fleece is what drove Jason and his Argonauts through multiple narrative scenarios in Greek mythology. More recently, the briefcase in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is a good example."

Hill then goes on to provide an extended example of how this works in strategic design, recounting a building development project that acts as a MacGuffin for larger, systemic changes, for example, to the Finnish fire codes. 

I thought a lot about Dark Matter and Trojan Horses, strategic design, and MacGuffins specifically reading this Vox article on the deceptively ambitious scope of Hillary Clinton's platform--almost too perfectly summed up in the rhetoric of innovation as "a plan for a minimal viable product of social democracy."

The image of Hillary Clinton as strategic designer, using a collection of incremental fine-print policy changes as MacGuffins that together create a colossal societal paradigm shift, fascinates me for several reasons:

1. MacGuffins tend to be bottom-up strategies, often specifically designed to trigger the powerful into enacting systemic change by those who lack the power and political clout to do so themselves. 
2. It goes against the candidate mythology that's been built up in this election, pitting Clinton as an entrenched "Washington elite" contra Donald Trump as the "outsider who would stir things up." 
3. Dark Matter and Trojan Horses is written from a Nordic perspective; Hill is specifically interested in how to allow for the extreme positive outliers you find in US-style capitalist societies while maintaining the Nordic floor. Clinton faces precisely the opposite challenge. (In the Vox article, Lane Kenworthy posits: “I think a lot of Clinton’s proposals are very much a step in the direction of a Nordic-style or social democratic welfare state.")

Peter Thiel notwithstanding, Clinton is the innovator's candidate. And not just because she's Silicon Valley's choice. She may not be very likable, but she seems like a shrewd strategic designer aimed at the same no-ceiling-high-floor spot Dan Hill describes. As the most powerful person in the world, she might just be able to prototype and pilot it. Given the alternative ("Make America Great Again" is, incidentally, the ugly flip side of futuristic nostalgia), I sure hope she gets the chance to try.