I know a lot of conservatives were aghast when Donald Trump decided to meet recently with Al Gore to talk about global warming.
Why is he talking to him? Is he going to sell us out to the greenies?
I just smiled, because this is how Donald Trump has always operated. It’s also how all good leaders operate.
You have to be willing to listen to people, and not only people who already agree with your preconceived ideas. In fact, if you only listen to people who agree with you, I’d argue it’s worse than useless because all they do is tell you how smart and right you are. If you’re already at the top of the food chain, you don’t need to hear more of that. You need to be challenged.
Listening to someone with an opposing point of view doesn’t mean you are going to get rolled by that person. It means you want to find out what you don’t know, and that includes the thinking behind an idea that’s different from your own.
I suppose it’s possible Al Gore could have presented a piece of information that Trump found surprising and persuasive. But more likely, Trump simply wanted to understand a) why Gore believes as he does; b) if he does indeed raise any good points; and c) if there are any ways to address legitimate issues that don’t require the embrace of bad policy.
Let’s consider the case of global warming. I don’t believe any more than you do that man-made global warming is about to provoke a planetary catastrophe like Al Gore wants us to think. And we all know he only uses these dire predictions as an excuse to promote socialist economic and regulatory policies.
But let’s say, even though we know his agenda is nonsense, we might agree that it’s a good idea to reduce CO2 emissions if we can find a way to do it without causing other problems. Maybe the private sector could be working on technology advancements that achieve the same goal without a carbon tax or massive new regulations on industry. That could be the sort of information Trump could glean from a meeting like this. It doesn’t mean he’s going to embrace Gore’s larger agenda. It means he wants to know what he doesn’t already know so it can help him to make good decisions overall.
This is the same reason Trump has put together a group of business leaders to advise him. Obviously Trump already knows more about business than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton ever will, but the perspectives of other leaders who run different kinds of companies can help him to fill in the blanks. The more he hears from them, the better he understands the impact of the policies he puts in place as president.
This is in very sharp contrast, of course, from the media image of Trump as a guy who already thinks he knows everything and doesn’t have to listen to anyone. He may find little value in listening to pundits, or to people who just tell him the same thing day after day, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t listen to people from whom he can learn. He does. He always has.
Conservatives should not worry that Trump will be unduly influenced by the people he’s listening to. Trump likes to learn and understand. Conservative instincts on top of good information always lead to better policies. Every day, Trump gives us new reasons to believe that’s what we’re going to get out of his administration.
I know a lot of conservatives were aghast when Donald Trump decided to meet recently with Al Gore to talk about global warming.
Why is he talking to him? Is he going to sell us out to the greenies?
I just smiled, because this is how Donald Trump has always operated. It’s also how all good leaders operate.
