Donald Trump has certainly run an unconventional campaign, however as we get closer to the election the ‘shock and awe’ tactics will probably change.
According to Wikipedia; “Shock and Awe, (technically known as rapid dominance) is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight.”
Trump’s odious campaign tapped into the anger felt by a swathe of disenfranchised Americans and unashamedly attacked anyone that got into his way.
Crazy Bernie Saunders, Crooked Hilary Clinton, Goofy Elizabeth Warren and even "nasty" Sadiq Khan have all faced the Trumpeters vitriolic attacks.
Some marketers might say that if you can appeal to your target group then nothing else matters, which might be true for a film, a fizzy drink or even a food spread.
However, I for one don’t want our politicians, whichever side of the Atlantic they are, to play the alienation game or the hate game, I want them to play the ‘statesman’ or woman game.
And to be honest that’s not a game, that’s someone being truly authentic.
I was lucky enough to listen to Yanis Varoufakis, ‘rock star’ economist and former Greek Minister of Finance, at a recent Guardian event.
As this took place in Brighton, home of the first elected Green MP and was hosted by Paul Mason a self-described ‘radical social democrat’ it would be fair to say that Yanis was preaching to the choir.
Nevertheless, one takeaway for me was the need for ‘reluctant politicians’ like Yanis as opposed to the professional politicians that we seem to be producing in America and the UK.
Reluctant politicians can be authentic and authenticity should be more important than anything else in politics.
For many voters in America Donald Trump is seen as an authentic voice, someone who speaks his mind, however distasteful that mind might be.
But according to recent reports from his campaign office - that was all an act and now we’re going to see a different side to Donald, a more presidential ‘Donald’.
This to me is more frightening than having the obnoxious Donald.
Politics shouldn’t be like marketing, where you find out what the people want and then deliver it, politics should be about deep rooted beliefs rather than product re-positioning.
Thankfully, despite his ‘more presidential’ pledge Trump seems unable to help himself and is still calling people ‘ignorant’ and ‘stupid’ and he’s even called Lord Sugar ‘a low-level small-timer’.
Recently The Washington Post claims to have tapes of Trump posing as his own PR person, John Miller, and talking about a ‘relationship’ with then, Italian model Carla Bruni, now wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Trump denies that he was in fact John Miller, but as of writing this post the ‘real’ John Miller has yet to materialize.
Americans, this isn’t a game-show, this man could be in control of the situation room, a man who admits to getting his military information from movies and a man who seems to be hell bent on insulting foreign leaders. That is apart from, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin.
By Nick James, Amplified Business Content
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