Despite a series of spirited attacks on the Donald Trump, and having the backing of the Republican establishment, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida "suffered a grievous setback" in yesterday’s primaries. Although Rubio won the Minnesota caucuses, the overall picture was dismal: “His otherwise limp finish may have cost him any leverage he had to demand that other candidates defer to him.”
The reasons for Rubio’s failure have important lessons, both for Republicans who are desperate to stop Trump from winning the nomination and for Democrats who will face Trump if he wins the nomination.
In defeat, Rubio pledged to fight on. “I will campaign as long as it takes and wherever it takes to ensure that I am the next president of the United States.” Based on his current campaign strategy, that will be forever.
Instead of flailing ineffectively at the front-runner, Rubio might have taken the advice that I offered last September on how to trump Donald Trump.
Even back then, veteran political strategists were baffled by what to do about the appearance of a candidate who follows none of the rules or conventions of political campaigns, who is larger than life, who is immune to the damage of political gaffes, who hogs center stage with his antics, his Twitter feuds and the unending free publicity, and whose poll numbers defy gravity and continue to surge.
Yet the secret to trumping Donald Trump was, and still is, easy to see, even if it is difficult for some candidates to execute. Let’s run through the leadership storytelling playbook and see the available options.
The Innocent: The first and obvious game-plan was to ignore Trump. This was Rubio’s approach for most of the campaign, buying into the mythology that Trump would self-destruct and simply go away. This didn’t work, in part because Trump, like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, is entertaining. Trump is fun: no one wants him to go away. What is the next outrageous thing that will tumble out of his untethered mouth? We want to know. This was Shakespeare’s secret: even as we deplore Falstaff, we are secretly loving his show. And so the summer fling with Trump has blossomed into a durable insurgency and now a wholesale takeover of the Republican party.
In the meantime, Trump systematically destroyed serious candidates, in the process doing lasting damage to the brand of the Republican party, particularly among minority groups, without whose support Republicans can’t win. With Trump hogging the limelight on center stage, and the audience loving the show and egging him on, the other candidates became non-entities.
The only way to win playing “The Innocent” is to have a stirring uplifting message that is more interesting and appealing than Trump’s reality TV show. In this respect, Rubio failed. Being “a child of the Reagan revolution” is not an inspiring message for voters who face a grim economic future. Nor is being a senator with the backing of the Republican establishment a helpful message in an election year in which the Republican establishment is seen as the problem, not the solution.
The Adult In The Room: Another possible option is to act with presidential gravitas and treat Trump with the disdain that a buffoon deserves. Do we really want to become a nation of racists? Do we really want to waste billions of dollars on building a futile border wall? Do we really want a trade policy that will bankrupt us? These are the tedious questions that should doom Trump’s candidacy when the public as a whole ultimately considers who should be president.
The problem is that the “Adult in the Room” option is only available to someone who already has some hint of presidential gravitas, who has high name recognition as a plausible president and who can stay in the game while Trump hogs the limelight and savages potential rivals.
The Adult-in-the-Room option is not available to Rubio, whose experience is paper thin, whose boyish demeanor lacks gravitas, and whose policy prescriptions lack credibility.
The Mud-Wrestler: In the last Republican debate, Rubio finally realized that his strategy wasn’t working and accepted Trump’s challenge and got down in the mud, trading punches, mano a mano, charge for charge. This is the game plan that Jeb Bush had eventually stumbled into, exchanging insults and getting into arguments with Trump. It was a no-win strategy for Bush, because Trump is a master mud-wrestler and Jeb was a rank amateur at the sport.
Trump is in his element in the mud and was delighted to have Rubio jump in with him. Like Jeb, Rubio just sounded desperate, making lewd jokes about Trump. Once he was covered with mud, Rubio himself looked ridiculous. Meanwhile Trump emerged from the mud pool looking like Russell Crowe in the movie, Gladiator. The mud that he was covered with suited him better than any makeup.
The Labeler: The Labeler is the game plan that Trump applied to the initial presumptive front-runner, Jeb Bush. “Jeb is a very low energy person,” said Trump ominously, “He lacks the energy to be president!” Over and over again, in innumerable press conferences and telephone interviews, Trump hammered away, with the same simple message. Because the message has a ring of truth to it, the charge began to stick. Whenever people saw Jeb standing in front of a crowd, complaining about Trump being mean to him, or even pleading with the audience to applaud him, people began to think: “Yes, maybe Trump is right: Jeb is low energy.”
Similarly with Rubio, Trump demeans Rubio as boyish and un-presidential. Once Rubio got down in the mud with Trump, that label had enhanced credibility.
Rubio might have tried to apply The Labeler strategy to Trump. But to do that, he would have to decide on which label to attach to Trump and then apply it relentlessly, until the label stuck. But Rubio still hasn’t picked on any single label. Instead, Rubio flailed away at all of Trump’s many vulnerabilities, but with so many accusations, none of his labels stick. Trump is known to be a flawed candidate. So what else is new? If Rubio had nailed Trump at the outset with a single charge that was plausible and true, and repeated the charge over and over again, and delivered it with passion, he might have begun to gather the traction he so obviously lacks. Now when Rubio criticizes Trump, he comes across like a kid complaining in the school yard that a bigger boy has been bullying him. This is not a helpful image for an aspiring presidential candidate.
The Fire-Bomber: Mitt Romney faced a similar problem with Newt Gingrich in 2012 and dealt with it by a firebombing Gingrich with attack ads on television. The tactic was effective. Gingrich’s campaign was crippled, and Romney, who was then #2 emerged as the front-runner. The problem for Rubio is that he has allowed himself to fall in the polls to the point where destroying Trump as a candidate would not fix the difficulties of his own sinking ship. Rubio not only has to undermine Trump: he has to find a way to re-animate his own low-excitement campaign, at a time when he is covered in mud from brawls with Trump, and wounded by Trump’s “little Marco” salvos. Fire-bombing by itself can’t save Rubio.
The Satirist: The most effective strategy is one that none of the Republican candidates have yet adopted: The Satirist—taming the grapevine with humor.
Bill Clinton was a master of The Satirist strategy. For instance, in early stages of the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign: President George H. W. Bush’s campaign was relentlessly attacking Hillary Clinton as unsuitable to be First Lady after she had admitted that she hadn’t spent her adult life baking cookies. White House sponsorship of the attacks ended when the Clinton campaign responded by saying, “George Bush isn’t running for President—apparently he’s campaigning to become First Lady.”
What made The Satirist effective for Clinton was that he has a sense of humor and revels in delivering such sly one-liners. The problem for the candidates in the Republican race for president is that they are a humorless bunch. None of them seems to have the panache and stage presence to deliver one-liners about:
• Trump’s campaign To Make America Racist Again,
• Trump’s plan to save the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges by building giant wall (as suggested by Andy Borowitz)
• How Trump is well-placed to rescue the institution of marriage given his own multiple experiences with it.
• And how nice to receive financial advice from a quadruple bankrupt who launched a mortgage firm on the eve of the financial crisis!
• How Trump is the disease of which he purports to be the cure.
And so on.
It’s important to use satire carefully. Mean-spirited ridicule can generate a well-deserved backlash. Thus Rubio’s jokes about Trump’s hair or the size of his hands or the color of his face miss the mark: the satire must be directly aimed at Trump’s flaws as a presidential candidate, not his personal appearance.
Finely tuned satire is a blend of love and truth. It is directed at all and everyone, including even the storyteller. It is important to be sure that you are making a valid point through your satire without causing cruel laughter or blame.
That’s the message that Trump’s opponents in both the Republican and Democratic parties will need to convey: Donald Trump just isn’t serious.
And read also:
Understanding Trump: Why Peggy Noonan Is Also Blind
Donald Trump: Falstaff for President
Donald Trump Wins Through Intimidation
After Nevada, Hillary Is Pitch Perfect
Why Leadership Storytelling is Important
Follow Steve Denning on Twitter at @stevedenning.
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