How to Lose a War
By: Nathan Allen
Tags: Politics, University, Trump, Banana Smoothie, Media Criticism

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”

This bit of mousetrap rubbish is the product of American Horatio Alger mythologizing born from Romantic rugged individualism, an Acres of Diamonds bumper sticker on the back of Henry Adams’ car.[1]

Everyone in business knows that no one will beat a path to your better mousetrap. You need marketing and distribution, the first so people will know about your mousetrap and the second so they can actually buy it. You can sell a whole lot of something mediocre as long as you have great marketing and distribution.

Except this bit of obviousness escaped half of political America in the last two generations.

In the 1970s, the right/conservatives took the think-tank/journal route to power. These think-tanks acted as shadow universities, employing many of the most respected academics. The objective of these think-tanks and journals was to win the war of ideas. And these superior ideas would influence the small coterie of powerbrokers in D.C. (and sometimes New York). The bowtie-and-cocktail crowd, rightly informed, would influence the nation.

So maybe they won the war, except no one else showed up.

While the right/conservatives were gathering the troops on Massachusetts Ave, the left were assuming control of the universities, the media, and big tech.[2] While AEI, Cato and Heritage — the big three rightest think-tanks — grew to $200M/year in annual revenue — the left took control of faculty lounges and HR departments.

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So while one side was building a better mousetrap, the other side focused on distribution and marketing. Everyone in business knows who wins that battle.

The funny thing about propaganda is that the message doesn’t really matter; it works because of distribution (it’s ubiquitous) and repetition. You can get a critical mass of the population to believe almost anything if you repeat it enough. The medium is the message, and the medium (education, television, social) is built for repetition.

In a 1982 morning cabinet meeting, Ed Meese (Reagan’s Counselor to the President) distributed what was essentially a Heritage instruction manual for running the country. He told the twelve cabinet officials before him that he’d read the book and that he expected everyone else to read it. Heritage must have been proud; they probably raised a lot off of that story.[3]

But did it matter? How many of those Heritage prescriptions were implemented? Or even attempted? Of course the problem was that Congress — Democrats who controlled the House and Republicans who controlled the Senate — feared Reagan’s campaign promises, so most of Heritage’s possibly-good-ideas went nowhere. But isn’t that the point? While Reagan won the war of ideas, Congress feared what was being said on the nightly news and in the universities. One side had distribution to thirteen cabinet officials; the other side had distribution to tens of millions each night through their televisions. Guess who wins…

The revanchist populism of Trump was mocked by the right precisely because Trump knew that if you build a better mousetrap in the woods, you’re just a guy alone in the woods with a mousetrap. Trump focused on distribution and marketing, which, to the intellectual dandies on the right, seems to naught but soil their policy papers (that no one reads). It all amounts to so much navel gazing.

The contrast in the germination of projects between the right and the left is startling. The right starts with ideas; they also end with ideas. It’s not evident that the right even knows what ‘scale’ means. The left starts with distribution; their targets are masses of people. Then they cycle through messaging on those captive masses to see what sticks. The left doesn’t need to attract people with ideas; they go to where people already congregate.

Meanwhile, the right claims victory in a war that no one showed up to, and their armchair efforts to build a civil society probably seem like progress in the deafening silence of their press conferences.