Why Donald Trump Is Actually Obama’s Natural Successor | Michael Slaby | Big Think

Why Donald Trump Is Actually Obama’s Natural Successor

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"History is decided by the people that show up," and about 60 million people — about 1/5th of the country — showed up to vote for a boorish reality TV star with no experience in politics. It shocked just about everyone, namely the news media and coastal liberals who thought that Hilary Clinton was a shoe-in for the presidency. Michael Slaby—who worked for Obama in the crucial 2012 elections—shows that Trump is part of a direct line from the "hope / change" motif of Barack Obama, albeit on a much darker and aggressive tone. So how do we get back to a level of normality? We engage the majority of America—the 65% of Americans that believe Trump is doing a terrible job—and try and get them to actively participate in politics and show that their voice matters.

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MICHAEL SLABY:

Michael Slaby is a global leader in digital and social media strategy, technology and data analytics, and explores how together they can elevate mission-driven organizations. For Michael, it is not only about developing the necessary technological platform, but understanding what it is that brings people together to take action online, as well as offline. Currently, he is Managing Partner of Timshel—a new company working to help solve social, civic, and humanitarian problems via better technology, engagement capabilities development, and creative capital. Previously he was a Fellow at Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

In 2012, when the Obama administration began gearing up for re-election, one of the first calls went to Michael Slaby, who was chief technology officer in 2008—when the historical campaign leveraged the internet and social media to raise funds and organize volunteers in ways that had never been seen before.

Michael helped lead Obama for America as Chief Integration and Innovation Officer in 2012, overseeing the CTO, CIO, and CAO, in order to ensure effective implementation and integration of technology across the entire campaign.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Slaby: I think the 2016 election has been eye-opening for me personally, and there's been a lot of personal reflection around “what does it mean to be involved?” for a lot of people. I think—and I hope—that we take President Trump's victory as a warning of what disengagement can cost us.

And I think our leaders have failed to lead on a lot of different dimensions. I think government has lost a productive culture of public service that makes it hard to participate, it makes it hard to understand the value of engaging in politics. Our first associations with the word “politician” is like, corruption/dishonesty. Public service should be about our highest ideals, it should be about our collective success, it should be about what is best and most ambitious for a group of people working together around a shared sense of purpose.

So I think as people wake up to “Wait a second, how is this possible here?” I think there's a couple of things at work there.

One is: as the country becomes more urban, and urban centers are decidedly more liberal, we have a sense that the country is much more liberal than it actually is. Turns out it's a really big country. It turns out there's a lot of people who still don't live in cities.

It turns out there are a lot of sort of frustrated people who live in cities who believed in Obama because of the promises he made about changing the system that Trump was a much more natural successor to than Secretary Clinton was.

And so I think the concept of someone who is frustrated and anxious seeing President Obama fail to largely change the culture of politics, see Trump as the bull for the china shop and there's a pretty straight line, and this is a lot easier to see in retrospect. I thought Secretary Clinton was going to win, so this is all with the benefit of hindsight and a lot of thought, and a lot of talking to a lot of people in a lot of places that aren't Chicago and aren't downtown New York.

But what I think this has awakened in people is the reality that people have to participate. There's this saying that “history is decided by the people that show up,” there's like nine different versions of that aphorism that are largely true in a participatory democracy. And I think we've gotten a little lazy, and I think President Trump scares a lot of people... and in a way that has been amazing to watch new people en...

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