Post 2
“New York. My City.”
This is the first line of The Apprentice as Donald Trump arrives in a limousine, and then he’s aboard a helicopter to do a voiceover above the skyscraper skyline. “Manhattan is a tough place. If you’re not careful it can chew you up and spit you out. You can really hit it big, and I mean really big. I won big league.”
I stop watching the first episode to continue reading the 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson. His first rule is to “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” His point: When we behave as if we have a good life––deserve a good life––job promotions and other yuuuuuuge advantages are more likely to gravitate our way. When we behave as victimized puppies, we get beaten.
“Let paranoia reign,” Trump said one time in our Thursday phone conversation. He didn’t mean paranoia in himself, but in others. The Apprentice was a show built on the insecurity of contestants, cowing puppies who faced weekly firings. “You have something others want. Don’t let them take it away,” Trump said.
I’ve interviewed a lot of leaders--Jack Welch, Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, Carly Fiorina. Even back then, many suspected that Trump marched to a different drummer. “I don’t come from that paradigm,” said Mary Wilderotter, who was CEO of Frontier Communications. “Some have a tendency to rule more by fear than by motivation. That’s usually a sign of insecurity.”
Love Trump or hate him, he mastered Peterson’s first rule in his own way long before the bestseller was published, long before The Donald was elected president. He’s mastered it to a clownish extreme. He so exaggerates the rule he’s a parody of it, a walking SNL skit with a frown of importance that makes me laugh as I watch the first episode for the umpteenth time.
Peterson’s first rule has withstood 350 million years back to lobsters. Lobster losers of the deep to this day endure frightened lives in lonely crags. For eons, lobsters who behave like they own the place live longer and healthier. They get the best of everything, including suitors. Or, as one orange lobster crudely put it on a hot Access Hollywood microphone months after The Apprentice first aired: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”
Monogamous lobsters like myself find this brand of success undesirable. The hot mic would have cost another man the election. But I can’t dismiss Trump for being over the top. It worked for him all the way to the White House. It’s fulfilling campaign promises in the face of unprecedented resistance. There are benefits to behaving as if we have, or deserve, status.
I’m an introvert. I can act extroverted when life calls for it. But I avoid conflict. I’ll run from the overbearing president of a home owners association. Trump wouldn’t hire me, I’m a lot like David Gould, the first contestant he fires. Gould has an MBA and an MD. Gould may be the smartest of the 16, “a lovely guy,” Trump says, but he doesn’t stand up straight with his shoulders back.
I read again Trump’s book The Art of the Deal. The first chapter is Think Big. Chapter Eight is Fight Back and to this day he slaps down loser rivals with his trademark counterpunch. He admires the trait in others, including women. On The Apprentice, he introduces his chief operating officer Carolyn Kepcher as a killer. “There are many men buried in her wake,” Trump says.
Kepcher presents herself as if it’s true. She’s thirty-five, but styles her hair like a schoolmarm about to rap someone’s knuckles with a ruler. She could pass for 45. If she’s trying to appear imposing, she succeeds.
I’d never try to be Trump. No one should. He can’t be replicated. But I’m convinced that I need to let my light shine more. I’ve too often erred the other way. I’m too sheepish. At 63, I’ve braced for imagined catastrophes in deep crags, rather than respond to challenges.
I don’t long to run roughshod over anyone. Peterson doesn’t recommend that unless it’s warranted. Some people deserve it, he writes, so we must stand tough when need be. I want that precise mixture of humility and confidence, a balance that is a theme of the new bestseller The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink. Trump is not the right model for humility, but he’s the poster child for confidence.
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” That’s the King James Version. King Trump’s version: “It’s either the suite or the street.”
By the end of Episode One we meet Melania Knauss, Trump’s girlfriend. The women win the program’s first challenge, using sex appeal to sell far more lemonade than the men. In my next post I hope to have an old monogamous white guy’s perspective on Trump and the MeToo movement. My mansplaining will likely land me in trouble. But I’ll try to land there with a measure of confidence.
As their reward for winning, the women are invited to Trump’s luxurious apartment. This is before Melania and The Donald are married, before Baron is born. Melania is unlike her boyfriend with the funny hair. She’s unlike Carolyn Kepcher with the less funny hair, who Trump fires in 2006. Kepcher’s confidence gave her TV stardom, which gave her opportunities and caused her to neglect her job of operating Trump-owned golf courses.
Trump marries Melania in 2005. She’s a soft version of strength. She doesn’t appear again on the program. She doesn’t need the ego boost.
“You’re very, very lucky,” the fawning contestants tell her.
“Thank you,” Melania responds. “And he’s lucky.”
She demonstrates that there are more ways than one to be confident. And, confidence is as good for a marriage as it is for a career. Peterson says it’s best for any relationship when both partners are strong.
If you love others, don’t mistreat yourself. Be self-assured. That’s not selfishness. That’s yuuuuuuge. That’s big league. That’s what I need to know today, and I learned it from my Thursdays with Trump during my first season “on” The Apprentice.
(Del Leonard Jones interviewed Trump each Thursday. He has edited the book Advice From the Top: 1001 Bits of Business Wisdom. He has published an historical novel, The Cremation of Sam McGee, set in the 1898 heyday of yellow journalism. The narrator is a fabricating reporter working for William Randolph Hearst during the Spanish-American War and Klondike gold rush.Descriptions of both books can be found on the home page of this website.)
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