Trump really is playing 3D chess

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Many of you are posting that Trump was a big loser today. I disagree. I think that he won, and he won brilliantly when you look at the long game. Yesterday, over lunch, a friend and I were trying to predict what would happen next. I commented that it would not surprise me if Trump decided to give Congress his final offer, and if they don't like it, sticks them with ACA for the foreseeable future. Lo and behold, today he made his final offer and signaled that Congress was now stuck with ACA. Brilliant.

Two reasons: 1) Fail Fast 2) Setting the tone.

I don't think Trump really wanted to do health care first on his agenda, or that health care was a high priority for him. I think he wanted to do Tax Reform first but was throwing a bone to the republicans in congress with limited downside to him. If it fails in the way that it did today, he has effectively set the tone with congress that he's not going to get bogged down on an issue. He'll negotiate for a bit, and then you either play ball or he walks away. That's a great tone for him to set as he moves to what I think is is true priority, tax reform. He also got the chance to learn how each member of the party thinks, negotiates, etc. He knows who is loyal and who is not.

The Fail Fast strategy, practiced extensively in Silicon Valley, suggests that it's best to prototype an idea quickly and test it in the "wild" as soon as you can. If it looks like it is going to fail, kill the idea and move on to the next one. Don't keep putting effort behind a potential failure of a design. This health bill was effectively Trump's prototype. He now knows the game. And if he really sticks to his guns that he's done with health care, he has also signaled to congress that in the future, he means it when he says final offer.

For more context, remember that the Republican Party did not elect him. He effectively elected himself, so he doesn't feel like he owes them anything. He can, and has, called them out on that. On top of that, keeping ACA in place, if it actually does continue to have problems, allows him to continue to blame Democrats AND republicans in Congress for the problems with the health care system. He stopped negotiating for a health bill and started analyzing the landscape early on in the process.

I think that Trump knew he had a flawed bill with no consensus and decided to use that situation in his favor to serve his longer term legislative interests. I predict that it will work out for him.

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