The Case Of Michael Bloomberg’s First Debate
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There probably is no better subject to talk about when it comes to money and purchasing truth than Michael Bloomberg. Disappointingly, his first debate did not go well for him. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom look back at the debate and recreates how Michael Bloomberg could have done better. They took the questions thrown by Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg. While at it, they highlight the need to put empathy on labels and diagnosis, fairness and integrity, and picking the value to fight for.
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Watch the episode here
There’s been a lot that happened that we’re going to talk about now. It is the Michael Bloomberg pile on at the Nevada debate. What you and I were talking about is money and purchasing truth, which you could argue, Michael Bloomberg has been trying to do.
He has done a good job spending money towards the truth of him as a leader, as a person and as somebody that has contributed to the city and the nation. He’s a person that sees the importance of somebody other than Donald Trump from his perspective and the Democratic perspective. I’m guessing that as you may have observed, he was a little bit surprised that just about every candidate came at him with some kind of flypaper. Something to get to stick to him. He was the flypaper and they were throwing the insults and the judgments and the accusations at him to see which one would stick to him. It seems like he struggled in communication because that’s what the show’s about. It is, “What do you say back when people say junky things about you and for it to work?”
I have to say that I was shocked. For someone that has had so much time not being in the trenches of the debates, opting out of the first several primary contests and it took him a while to even qualify for the debate. I was really surprised that he wasn’t better prepared. It was disappointing to me.
With all that money around, you think you could buy a communication specialist or two. It might be helpful to know what to say back to the toughest questions. I’ve mentioned this several times on this, is that before I go into any high conflict mediation, divorce settlement and any of these things, I write down the worst things that this person could say to the other person. “Here are the worst things that could be said,” and then I write back the compassionate response to the worst thing. If any of the Michael Bloomberg leadership gets ahold of this blog and read it, it’s, “What do you say back when this person says this? What rabbit hole do you not want to get caught into?” Let’s have some fun with this because I’ll pretend I’m Michael Bloomberg and you pretend you’re all the other folks and you get to launch whatever you want in my direction. Tom, I haven’t had very much time to prepare for this, but I have a great sense of understanding that my skill is enough and awareness of communication might be helpful for Michael Bloomberg he searches to get the highest land and also to defeat the major marketing and branding experts that Donald Trump is bringing into it.
Bill and I would like to state for our audience that we did this intentionally. You admittedly had not watched the debate and that’s okay. We did that on purpose because we want to show how you can at the moment on the fly, be surprised by or not know what statements are going to come at you if you’re Mike Bloomberg. I think you should be able to predict what kind of statements would come at you if you’re Mike Bloomberg, but be prepared for the worst-case scenario like you were saying. I want to hear how you would do it as opposed to how others would. Let’s not start with the hardest one.
You can bring whatever you want, the name of the candidate and what they said.
I’m going to role play as Amy Klobuchar and say, “Mike Bloomberg, you are hiding behind your TV ads.”
“You would like my TV ads to be clearer and present a more of an authentic view of me as a president and a leader and also talk about the mistakes that I’ve made along the way. Is that what you are requesting my TV ads do?”
“Yes.”
It’s very important for the president to be honest and in order for them to be honest, they’ve also got to present that they’ve done something in the world and my TV ads were focused on people getting to know me. Both the good things about me, but also the things that didn’t go so well because that’s a part of being a strong leader.
I think Amy Klobuchar wouldn’t know what to say to that. She would stumble like me.
What am I going to do with that? He agreed and one-upped me compassionately and said he was willing to do vulnerability. Let’s see if we can bring another one and see what else you got for me.
I’m going to be Elizabeth Warren saying, “Michael Bloomberg, women that you have made to sign nondisclosure agreements are being muzzled and this drip of stories of women saying they’ve been harassed and discriminated against is going to be a massive liability in the general election.”
“Thank you, Senator Elizabeth Warren, for bringing that up. It’s important for women to get their need for being heard met, but it’s also important for the need for privacy to be met. A lot of the time, we do nondisclosure to meet the need for privacy, that the things that happen in-house are not disclosed outside the house. It’s a greater version of integrity because we want a written version of integrity. I disagree with the label of the diagnosis of women being muzzled. That’s what’s true at all. What’s true is professional communication that takes place outside the business environment or outside the company versus inside the company.
A nondisclosure is in the hopes that they would be truthful and bring honesty inside my organization, which I strive for and it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. I’m sure that there are stories of either me or more importantly other employees at work who did not follow that type of ethic that I carry of making sure that women’s needs are being heard. Their need for being heard is met and their need for respect is met. It doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but it also is something that we’ve got to balance how privacy works inside the company versus outside the company.” What is she going to do with it?
It’s over her head. She wouldn’t know what to do with it.
What winds up happening is he looks presidential. He’s commanding leadership like, “I’ve been down this road before and yes, people say and do things junky inside my company too because we are humans. There are people that have done stuff under my leadership that I would not agree with from an ethics and integrity place. The reason why a nondisclosure is in place is to protect the privacy inside the organization.”
I think that would’ve landed much better. He originally answered that question poorly saying, “None of those women accused me of doing anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told.” Trying to minimize it and proportionalize it was not good. He came back from that a little bit though and he said, “I’m simply not going to end these agreements because they were made consensually and they have every right to expect that they will stay private.” Now, that starts to maybe get to a little more empathy.
It inches towards it but what he needed to go off is the word, muzzle, and the need for expression and the need to be heard. He didn’t go after that because he didn’t take Bill Stierle’s training on labels and diagnosis. When a label and diagnosis are set in the front or a name, you go right after the name and you provide empathy for the name to disable it. You don’t name call the person back. You don’t say, “Well,” or you don’t minimize what it is. You call it for what it is, “This is the need for expression that many women have not had met fully in their lifetime and it does take place in our society and most certainly it has taken place 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago or 15 years ago.” It’s the culture of, “You have to be quiet or otherwise you lose your job.” That old mindset is something that we’re trying to undo right now so that we can get back to truth.
Let me hit you with another one here. Senator Elizabeth Warren said because this one she went down the path of labeling and diagnosing Mike Bloomberg. I’m interested to see how you would handle that. I’m Elizabeth Warren, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg, you are an arrogant billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians.”
“In the past, the need for respect has not been meant towards women. You may have heard or there might be tapes of me saying derogatory phrases towards women and you would like mutual respect to be not only here on the stage but in the office of the president. That’s why I choose not to speak and say things that are derogatory. If I may have said them in the past and if I were to look at a tape and see it coming out of my mouth, there’s one thing for sure. I will not do what the president is doing right now, which is not meeting the need for truth, not owning integrity and not falling on the sword of their own mistakes. That is not the leadership and that’s why we’re all here on the stage is to get him out of that seat because we’re all tired of it.”
That was a great pivot to not only having empathy and integrity acknowledging that you might’ve said things in the past but then pivoting to, “That’s not how a president behaves and that’s how the current president behaves and we have to get him out of there.” That was brilliant.
It’s the target thinking. It’s all built around mutual respect and a small little sword that he fell on is, “In the past, I have said things that have not been respectful,” as if Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have a list, as if Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a list and as if Joe Biden doesn’t have a list. They all got a list of things they said that were not respectful, aware and conscious. It’s not as important on whether you said it or not. How willing are you to be accountable and take the integrity sword, fall on it for a brief time, pull the sword back out, stick it back into stone it and call it a day? “Yeah, I did do that many years ago. You’ve seen me talking that way and that was not my best self. It’s not the person on this stage right now.” It’s all about differentiation. It’s not about who said what when.
I like that because that’s the reality of humanity or human nature, Bill, is that there are some people like the current occupant of the oval office who would say, “I’ve always done this. I’ve always said this.” They will not admit that they changed their views on something or that they made a mistake and now see things differently. Somehow, they think it’s a character flaw to be different now than you were in the past. I don’t think that’s true at all. You can learn from your past mistakes and move on. Admitting that came out of your mouth in the past, unlike the current president who would say, “No, the Access Hollywood tape, I didn’t say that. That’s not me,” or whatever. He’s put out a bunch of smokescreens there.
It’s a locker room talk. That was Hillary Clinton’s missed pivot. She has to know that he’s going to minimize it and it wasn’t like that he and his people back then already started testing that it was locker room talk. As soon as that came out of her mouth, her next sentence is, “I guess we just don’t want a fifteen-year-old in the White House then because a fifteen-year-old in the White House that’s speaking like a locker room.” The way I would say it is this. She had a little trouble that she had her own fifteen-year-old in Bill Clinton as a husband. He could come back and pivot around and say, “What about your husband? I have him in the line right now. He is in the line right now. You’re the one that’s out of line. You are the one who is not changing your behavior.”
Not changing and not learning from it.
“We’re going to get more of the same as your big mouth in the government. Do we want a big mouth that says things that they can’t deliver and that would bankrupt the country because we give him the keys just like the other business failures? Do we need a failure person here? Because you’re a failure person.” “I’ve never failed.” “Yes, you are. You should be fired right now from this stage. You have so many failures. It’s that the people on your side have no courage.” If she would have called him out early, “No courage,” she would now have a whole different book to write as the president. All she needed was 10% more to vote for her and 5% in certain states.
She’s attacking and labeling his most loyal supporters saying they don’t have courage, but they weren’t going to vote for her anyway. Does that matter?
It doesn’t matter at that point.
Once she became president, she would have to try to reconcile because she’s their president too, which she could have done.
You do the collaboration and cooperation narrative after you’re elected, not before. Say it back to me and you will start feeling better. “Collaboration and cooperation after you’re elected.”
“Collaboration and cooperation after you’re elected.” It’s a great lesson. Now, I’m going to be Bernie Sanders, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg, you have not shown any support for the African-American community as evidenced by your stop and frisk policy as mayor of New York.”
“Safety has been one of the biggest challenges that we faced in New York at that time. We needed the need for safety met. The strategy that we took, stop and frisk was a strategy in order to get safety and protection to take place. It’s not the strongest choice I would make now. In fact, I think it’s a terrible choice in hindsight, but at the time, we had to figure out how to deal with the safety issues on the street. Certain areas had more crime in it than other areas. These were the initial strategies that were recommended for people to take. Did some of the police officers take it too far?” “Yes, they did.” “Was that under my watch?” “Yes it was, but it doesn’t mean that at this moment that the African-American community can’t see that I can make the changes because we did make the changes. We did figure out how to do it in a better way and still get the need for safety met. Unlike our current president who is interested in dividing us and not interested in providing any support to the African-American community, any inclusion of our diverse nation. You’re right, in the past that did not go well for us and unlike our president, I know what it’s like to change and make improvements in my leadership.”
You took this entirely away from a racially-charged issue to all about safety and security. That’s brilliant, and Michael Bloomberg could do that too. He needs to learn how to do that.
Safety as a function. This is #Bloomberg right now, it’s a fundamental message in communication. Breathe, pick the value you’re going to fight for. Set the value that you’re fighting for in alignment with the question first, give empathy towards it. That is a safety issue and it’s also a trust issue. I didn’t do that, but I could work trust in there. “You’re right. There’s a bunch of people on the fence that are wondering if they can trust me, but I’ll let you know one thing. Trust comes from learning and not doing the same thing again, unlike what we’re seeing in the White House.” It’s like, “Can you trust it?” He has a one-trick pony loyalty. That’s his trick. That’s all Donald Trump has is his ability to create loyalty and then marginalized people that are not loyal or get in the line with his propaganda. I’ll call Donald Trump propaganda on stage. It’s like, “What’s the word propaganda,” people will say. Propaganda is a false message to reinforce somebody that can’t deliver what they’re promising like Mexico’s going to pay for the wall. We’re fighting stuff that people believe in. “Yeah, but the Democrats won’t let them.” You’re still believing the propaganda. I got a lot of avenues to go here. Give me some more.
Let’s get Mayor Pete Buttigieg into this one. I’m now going to be Mayor Pete Buttigieg, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg, you are a billionaire who thinks that money ought to be the root of all power and you’re trying to buy the selection by spending almost $400 million on advertising.”
“Fairness has not been met in our election system. Once the Supreme Court voted for Citizens United, fairness for every vote counting as one vote went out the door. They voted in a way that allowed me as a billionaire to exercise my voice greater than the voice of others through money. It is something that is not supposed to be in this system, but it is and I feel grateful for you calling it out because it needs to be reformed. The way we do money and politics has made all of the politicians have to spend more time raising money than legislating and advocating in Washington. Most politicians now have to spend the majority of their time raising money. They can’t even write good laws. They have to depend on the lobbyist to write a law for them to vote on because there’s no time for them because they’re so busy raising money. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, this is exactly why this is a problem and this is another reason why Donald Trump is in office now. Because Donald Trump is spending that money and all the people that are benefiting from his tax cuts are benefiting from it, we got to stop this. This is crazy that power can be paid for. It’s got to end.” I’m agreeing with him than saying I’m different.
I have every right to spend my money or whatever. He is not making it about him being a billionaire. You’re making it about the system broken.
It’s a fairness narrative. It’s not fair.
Another way that I thought he could have pivoted and you didn’t go there, but I think there are many different ways to go out this. You picked fairness, which is great but there’s also an integrity argument to be made. Would you agree that he is not having to carry any special interests to get the money necessary to get elected? He doesn’t have to owe anybody for it.
Let me go ahead and play that on both sides since you brought that one up. That’s a very good one to bring up. “Unlike our current president who said the words out of his mouth, ‘I’m so rich, I don’t have to listen to anybody and I can’t be bought.’ He regrettably can be bought through how he grabs for respect at the expense of others, how he does loyalty instead of truth. How he has unequal fairness by commenting on the court system and the way those people voted. This is exactly the person that’s opposite of it because a rich person like him with no integrity is the problem that we’re currently dealing with. Luckily, from my viewpoint is, it doesn’t matter any of you that are on this stage here, I’m supporting all of you going forward, even if I’m not here. I think that my leadership with integrity, just by saying, ‘I am following what the values of America stand for,’ is way better than what this other billionaire is doing. We’ve got to also get money out of the politics because it’s not fair.” I appreciate this but Donald Trump actually used that narrative, “I can’t be bought,” and then he was bought with respect, recognition, praise, acknowledgment, and self-worth.
You highlight all of his character flaws by pivoting on this, “I can’t be bought.” The president said he couldn’t be bought because he has money, but in fact, everybody uses different currency to buy him.”
Tom, you put it better than I did. The currency to buy him, that would’ve been the best pivot ever because it’s like, “Mayor Pete Buttigieg, people are going to judge you by your age, but clearly you’re one of the smartest guys up on the stage.
He could have almost pulled the Ronald Reagan moment against Walter Mondale saying, “You’re incredibly intelligent, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but I’m not going to use your age and inexperience against you.” Do you remember that one? It was disappointing to me because as a citizen observer, seeing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s advertising messages a lot in the last month especially, I’ve been saying, “Those ads are so well-done. Here’s a man who’s setting the vision for America.” That’s what these ads have been doing. Would you agree?
Yeah. They’re very strong. Setting the vision and also say in that vision that we are going has an emptiness to it. He’s not going after because he doesn’t want to get in the same barrel that everybody else is in. Bernie Sanders is stuck in Donald Trump’s liar barrel. Instead of Donald Trump is getting his need for respect not at the expense of others. Many of the candidates have their own way of talking about Donald Trump that is not effective.
The “Liar, liar pants on fire” offense by the Democratic challengers against Donald Trump is a losing argument.
Tom, to think about this a little more and throw our arms around a little bit is settling in that if you’re going to be the president, you may want to master communication so that you’re able to both have empathy for the person that’s the opposition as well as direct and redirect towards the common vision that both people want. The limits that the winning formula for the Republicans and the limitations that it has is that they’ve scapegoated poor people and immigrants and that narrative that they’ve put themselves and then played the race card on top of it have brought us into a place to expose a part of our nation that’s really hard to wrestle with. Because if we’re holding to the primary values of the United States, it’s an inclusionary mindset. It is not an exclusionary mindset. You cannot meet your needs. If you look at the constitution, the idea and the Bill of Rights is not meeting your needs at the expense of others is what keeps the mob from running the nation.
Now, the problem we have is it’s not keeping the corporations from running the nation. It’s a different mob. Many of them are having their ethics and integrity challenges right now. Some of them are coming back to the center of the table saying, “We have to upgrade our game because we’ve got our own version of slash-and-burn with our clients and customers and our nation that we’re exercising on the behalf of the 2,000 shareholders we have. We’re going to throw the system under the bus because of those folks because we want another $5 return on their investment. We’re not doing that. A really unsettling thing is like the gift of Donald Trump, which is being the wrecking ball that says, “Are you going to stand for your values or not?” By the way, you’ve elected somebody that’s not standing for your values. How badly do you want this as a nation? Are you going to have integrity and criminality and have those separate and have this be just as important as this?
This discussion and this episode for our audience highlight how not only did Mayor Michael Bloomberg fail at this first debate, he was unprepared and didn’t do himself any favors. Coming off of what I think is a very successful campaign strategy thus far to focus on Super Tuesday, set the vision for America and not get caught up in this hamster wheel of competing in the early contest and debating. That was unfortunate, but at the same time, the five other Democratic candidates missed huge opportunities. They tried to get soundbites attacking him and none of them pivoted to set their vision.
They missed the opportunity. They came in and they’re trying to take him out at the knees and trying to go after the weak spots and stuff like that. Instead of staying above the fray and saying, “The need for integrity is and here’s what fairness looks like to me. Here’s what justice looks like to me. Here is the way forward here,” and treat him like another person on the stage. This thing jumped in my head. It’s like having Marshawn Lynch join the Seattle Seahawks to be the starting running back in a couple of playoff games. The guy has been out of football for a little while and he’s not going to run over everybody like he used to. Now, Michael Bloomberg comes in flatfooted, same as Marshawn Lynch and they go, “You tackled a little bit at the line in a scrimmage. Is that all you’ve got? You didn’t even do any preparation to get ready for this. Didn’t you do any hours of coaching? Did you have anybody that had some skill and conflict talk to you?”
What’s amazing is the candidate that gets it and gets some skills, some perspective at communication with all this would rule these debates and fundamentally change the remainder of the campaign, but none of them are doing it. It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out, but I think we may get to a convention where there is no candidate who has met the delegate threshold to just be the obvious winner.
There is a little bit more that each of the candidates needs to do instead of waiting for people to drop out. It’s to become the front leader by twenty points. Bernie Sanders is in a better position especially after this debate, the way you talked about it because I haven’t seen the debate. I’m going to go back and watch and say, “By the way, here’s what Pete Buttigieg could have said after he said that sentence.” “Here’s what Elizabeth Warren needed to frame it so that she’d start looking presidential instead of looking academic and adversarial.” All of them are getting stuck in the criticism box. They don’t belong in the defensive box, the contempt box. They don’t belong in those boxes but they put themselves in it.
Bernie Sanders is trying to appear like a frontrunner, which is an unusual position for him to be in. The reality is you’ve got now three moderate candidates who are going to be jacking for that voting bloc, which is decidedly larger than Bernie Sanders’ base of very left progressive support. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. We may, for the first time in almost half a century in this country, get to the point where the winner of the Iowa caucus or the winner of the New Hampshire primary, neither of them ends up being the nominee, which would defy conventional wisdom. There’s been some written about that. I think anybody can. They’re probably, except Joe Biden is too damaged to come back.
In our next episode, I’d like to talk about how do we allow truth to bubble up and how do we allow strong leadership to bubble up from a place of compassion? We’re going to disagree on all kinds of different strategies to get there. The problem is we’re still not talking about truth enough. The truth is that the economic policies that have been put forth by the Republicans have not helped us. That’s the thing that we’ve got to do some better honesty in there. They’re still running on that horse that’s limping and it’s disheartening.
Is that more of a general election campaign message?
They’ve got to start seeding the belief and the structure of what they’re not doing. That’s the vision now. Barack Obama did this great, by the way. He talked about what they weren’t doing early and then he pivoted and pivoted all the way through, so everybody else was following him. John McCain and the Republicans were flatfooted when he pivoted from Iraq back to Afghanistan. This is where the war is and where it was. Everybody is going to be like, “We thought that too.”
It’s too late.
There is more to come.
Thank you.
Take care.
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