Will Trump Learn From Failure? Depends On His Mental Condition

Learning from failure is not a new nor unique concept. Adversity, mistakes and failure can provide for teaching moments. Many of greats through history have applauded the value of wisdom derived from experience that at first glance might seem devastating.

“I don’t measure a man on how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.” General George Patton

“Storms purify the atmosphere.” Henry Ward Beecher

“No pressure, no diamonds.” Mary Case

And so it seems that our president is also aware that it has been said that failure can be beneficial. “We all learned a lot,” said President Trump of the failed Republican health care plan. Did he? “We learned a lot about loyalty. We learned a lot about the vote-getting process. We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in obviously both the Senate and in the House.” This is not about learning. This is about blaming. In fact,

President Trump has spent a great deal of his campaign and early presidency making excuses, blaming others or demeaning those who doubt him. “…I guess I can’t be doing so badly, because I’m President, and you’re not,” Trump told Time’s Washington bureau chief, Michael Scherer for a Time Magazine article. Defending your failures is miles from learning from them. You want to profit from your missteps you start by looking in the mirror. Where did you trip up? What could you have done different? But for someone to believe that he can learn from his failures, he must first establish believe he has failed. This is not a question of philosophy nor or even one of innate positivity. When failure is obvious to all but the one person who has failed, it may not be a stretch to consider that someone is in a mental state has any ability to learn at all. Candidate Trump won his election on a platform full of free 2,000 mile long, thirty foot high beautiful walls, banned Muslims and a cover-everyone, lower premium, lower health cost health program. All of which his supporters hailed as sufficient slam-dunk reasons to elect a never-politician to politically deliver these promises. Since way back in late January of 2017, we learned that if a wall goes up, we’re paying for it. Whatever the Muslim-ban morphed into, that seems to be held up by the courts (which based on the President’s warnings, terrorists are now pouring into the U.S.). The trifecta was hit when the health plan he promised (On 60 Minutes in September, he said, “I am going to take care of everybody…the government’s gonna pay for it.”) evolved quickly into an anti-Trump supporter program, with a two billion dollar benefit to the top 2% that only 17% of America favored, suffered a bloody loss. In past administrations with ideological beliefs this might be considered political compromise. In Trump’s approach this might be more properly deemed, whatever it takes.

Which all comes down a difference between ideology and winning. Winning alone is not an ideology. It is the absence of ideology. It is closer to psychopathy which Dictionary.com defines a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial , often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. Right or wrong is not a consideration for a psychopath. Of course there still can be hope for a successful presidency.

Despite his personal or moral deficiencies, Trump could still learn. Maybe not from mistakes but from being open to acquiring factual information, applying it and persevering through obstacles to a realistic goal. Then again, expecting Trump to learn  is to ask him to do something he may not be mentally, intellectually or emotionally equipped to do.

Tsk.

Steve Young is the author of “Great Failures of the Extremely Successful…Mistakes, Adversity, Failure and other Steppingstones to Success.” It can be found at Greatfailure.com