IVY LEAGUE BOYS

A major difference between President Trump & his recent predecessors & competitors is that he isn't an "Ivy League boy" (for lack of a better term) as many of them were. Ivy Leaguers (regardless of where they might have gone to college) value things like nuance, sophistication, generalization, etc. in communication. They also don't seem to understand or appreciate how things work in the real world, international, playing-for-keeps geopolitical arena. Powerful autocratic leaders such as Kim Jong-un have no respect for people who try to negotiate with them from a position of what they see as weakness, indecision, or ambiguity.

In interviews following the meeting with Kim, President Trump brought something to light that really didn’t surprise me, nor should it have surprised anyone who has made a serious effort to understand him. He mentioned the need to use rhetoric to make his point with Kim. Interestingly, he said that he felt kind of foolish using some of the rhetoric in his remarks about the North Korean leader. But he also knew from decades of negotiating for many things with many kinds of persons with various kinds of personalities & motivations, that this kind of preliminary communication was necessary for the upcoming negotiation to be effective.

Think what you will about the President (which I’m sure you do; it’s pretty hard to be neutral). But if you will be honest with yourself, you have to admit that he is not an “Ivy League boy.” He knows how to compete & win (at least conditionally in the case of North Korea)  with the “Big League boys” in dealing with real world, immeasurably serious problems that need to be faced & overcome.