PRedictions, PRojections, PRaise, and PRedators: The Iran War Is Just Like the Federal Debt Because…
I’ll betcha a Diet Coke that if we polled the American people and asked ‘em if the federal debt was a big, serious problem, a sizable majority would say yes, it is. (Because… of course!)
In fact, if we posed a follow-up question and asked ‘em if it would be immoral to leave an enormous debt for our children and grandchildren to pay off, another huge majority would agree. (Probably by a 3-1 ratio. Maybe even higher.)
Same goes if you asked a third question — “Should the government prioritize paying down the debt?” Almost everyone would answer affirmatively. (It’d be yet another landslide!)
But if you tried to cut spending, those same voters would scream, cry, yell, complain, and vote your arse out of office.
That’s the best way to understand the PR fallout from the Iran War, because the polling has revealed a very similar dichotomy: As my colleague Matt Margolis — the hardest working man in conservative media — noted last week, the “Iran War Polling Makes No Sense”:
According to a new CBS News poll on the Iran war, Americans say they're worried, stressed, and angry about the conflict. That’s fair enough. But what really struck me about the poll is that it found that most Americans support the war's key goals, but not the war itself. The poll found that 60% disapprove of U.S. military action in Iran, and only 40% approve.
That’s pretty conclusive opposition. However, there are huge bipartisan majorities saying several outcomes are important for the U.S. to achieve: opening the Strait of Hormuz for oil access, 87%; ensuring the Iranian people are free, 81%; stopping Iran from threatening other countries, 76%; permanently ending Iran’s nuclear program, 76%. Those aren't abstract foreign-policy preferences; they literally are the objectives of the military campaign currently underway. The one Americans claim to oppose.
I call it the fat-guy-on-a-couch syndrome: If you asked your 350-pound friend if he’d like to be thin, healthy, and attractive, he’d take the deal in a nanosecond — but if you told him it would require hard work on his part, he’d shrug his shoulders and pop open another can of Pringles.
(Pro Tip: If you don’t want your wife to know how many beers you’re drinking, you can hide two of ‘em in an empty Pringles container. Maybe three if you crunch ‘em a bit. Shh, it’ll be our little secret.)
The American people want the federal debt to go away because they know it’s a big problem. If you could wave a magic wand and make it vanish, they’d throw you a ticker-tape parade and serenade you with Mariah Carey songs.
But that doesn’t mean they’re willing to sacrifice to solve it!
In a recent CNN poll, 89% of Americans view Iran as unfriendly or an enemy. We KNOW the mullahs hate us. We KNOW they can’t have nuclear weapons. We KNOW the world would be a better, safer, more prosperous place if the Iran threat was solved.
But if it requires an iota of sacrifice, we don’t want to be the ones who’ll do it.
The American people want all the benefit — and none of the pain. (Fair enough: Who likes pain?)
So I’m not going to bash the voters for being selfish. Or demanding instant gratification. Or having the attention span of a hyperactive goldfish. It is what it is.
If our goal is winning hearts and minds, we must meet the voters where they actually are — not where we wish they’d be.
And therein lies the smartest PR strategy for President Donald Trump: Get us to the finish line ASAP.
Right now, the Iran War is all pain and no benefit. From the stock market to gas prices, we’re bearing the burden of the war without enjoying any of the rewards.
But the good news is, Election Day isn’t ‘til November. That’s more than half a year away.
If we’re still haggling about ceasefires and/or Schrödinger’s Strait in November, the GOP will be massacred in the midterms. I’m talking a 40+ seat flip in the House, plus losing the Senate.
Nobody likes getting bad press. Nobody likes it when the stock market tanks on their watch. And holy moley, being on the receiving end of a full month of bad press?!
That’s horrible!
But we won’t lose the midterms with a month of bad press in April or May. That’s not how the political game is played.
Our tactical objective is reaching maximum strength — peaking — on the first Tuesday of November. (Or maybe a few weeks earlier, if early voting is gonna be a thing.)
April and May are like training camp: It’s where we shake off our ring-rust. This is when we should be putting in the grueling work that’ll pay dividends on Fight Night.
We don’t want to be the prizefighter who peaked too early in training camp.
As president, Trump has thousands of competing interests: the economy, international diplomacy, 401Ks, media coverage, polling numbers, military commitments. I strongly suspect he’s been waging war with one eye on all those other interests, because he wants to minimize the negative fallout. It’s why he strategically times announcements to protect the financial markets. It’s why he keeps dithering around with the mullahs.
That’s a mistake: Get us to the finish line ASAP.
We’re still in the pain phase. We need to get to the benefit phase.
And we need to get there well before Election Day, so the American people can enjoy the victory dividend — and their short attention span will then work in the GOP’s favor.
If we achieve victory at least 90 days before Election Day, all the uproar over the Iran War will be a distant memory. The pain will be long forgotten — and only the benefit top of mind.
Screw April and May! (Which, I just realized, are common girls’ names; apologies to any readers named April or May.) Sacrificing today to win tomorrow is the president’s smartest play.
Get us to the finish line ASAP.
Like Winston Churchill used to say, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
And don’t stop ‘til you reach heaven.
PRediction: The most curious unanswered question is why President Trump hasn’t prodded the Iranian people to rebel against the mullahs already. Not only would it pressure the regime to capitulate to the U.S. so it could refocus on the internal threat, but the only real long-term solution to the Iranian problem is regime change.
But it’s probably just a matter of time.
Because it’s a low-cost gamble for the Americans: If the rebellion succeeds, we win. And if it doesn’t succeed, Iran murdering its own people in broad daylight has PR value in the ongoing propaganda war.
Clearly, it’s a pressure point that President Trump could exploit in negotiations. And whatever you wanna say about Trump, he certainly values negotiating leverage.
It’s as close to a no-brainer as possible.
I can understand why we didn’t want Iranian civilians taking to the streets when the bombs were dropping; I don’t understand why we’re not “greasing the wheels” of an uprising during the ceasefire. It doesn’t make sense.
The answer, I think/hope, is that the “wheel-greasing” is going on behind the scenes — and the rebellion will be given the green light ASAP.
PRojection: Either way, thousands upon thousands of Iranian civilians are almost certainly going to die. A rebellion, it seems, will be coming one way or another.
Barring a black swan event — and the regime collapsing under its own hubris — an Iranian civil war now seems inevitable. The mullahs will be incentivized to demonstrate that they’re still in full control — which means slaughtering civilians is a means to an end. Iran lacks the weaponry to break a blockade or stop the Americans, so reestablishing its fear factor by murdering its own people is low-hanging fruit.
And it’s something they’ve done plenty of times before.
Meanwhile, if the Iranian people hate the regime as much as we’re hearing, they’ll be highly incentivized to seize freedom for themselves and their children. Opportunities like this don’t come around every day.
From Trump’s point of view, it’d be FAR better if the rebellion began while our warships were still nearby. This would prevent the mullahs from using airpower to mow down civilians — a fate that befell thousands of Iraqis in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Because, when the Iranian people rebel, we want to maximize their chances for success.
It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when.
All I’m saying is, it’s in our interest to speed up the timetable. Let’s get the ball rolling — like, perhaps, this week.
Truthfully, it should’ve already happened.
Because the worst outcome of all would be a delayed rebellion — one that starts long after we’ve left the Middle East — and hundreds of thousands of brave Iranians dying for naught, because the mullahs had a free hand to kill them all.
