Dima, the lucky third passenger on our trip, is from Ukraine, not the United States originally. He was very curious to hear about how our election process for President works and my dad was more than willing to share his opinion on the matter (arguably too willing if measured by the time he spent talking). Ukraine also very recently had a very significant presidential election of its own where a young, non-politician named Volodymr Zelensky beat Petro Poroshenko who was the extremely corrupt sitting president. Zelensky was formerly a comedian and star of a television show where he ironically (or not) played President. He is widely viewed by younger people in Ukraine to be less likely to follow the corrupt path of his predecessors. In a sense, the Ukrainian election boiled down to only one issue. Corruption. So Dima’s view of politics was shaped more by assessing his faith in the person himself than any particular policy ideas he espouses in advance since it is assumed in Ukraine that politicians are almost always lying. His discussion with my dad went like this:
I drove from Portland, OR to Chicago, IL last weekend (technically 3 days) with my friend Dima and my dad (Simon). I am not sure what I was expecting to talk about for 35 hours but somehow there was never a quiet moment which made the emptiness of Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota a little more entertaining (and irritating). As much as I was hoping the drive would be like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Wes Anderson, it ended up being a lot less profound and with a lot more Applebees, Outback, Econolodge and Culver’s. Even though we didn’t solve all of the worlds intellectual problems like characters in a Wim Wenders or Ingmar Bergman movie might or have any coming of age moments (except my dad asking the waiter for too many details about the “nature, flavors and aroma” of the mashed potatoes at Applebees and me politely asking him to “shut the fuck up”), we had plenty of time to talk about politics. It ended up being a very illuminating discussion for me in a way I didn’t expect.
Simon: Dima, in the US, each candidate has a “Platform” where they share their position on all of the major issues so that people can see where they stand and what they have done in the past on each issue.
Dima: Simon, that’s stupid. Why does anyone care about their “Platform” when everyone knows they are lying anyway? Why not just judge if you trust the person and then you will believe they can figure it out?
Simon: <Incoherent sounds>. That’s just ridiculous. Their “Platform” is what they are running on and how people choose a candidate. You look at their voting record and can assess for yourself.
Dima: Why do people care about their platform? It’s not true. Simon, man, it’s different now. You don’t need so much money or so much bullshit. You can just have a YouTube channel and if you can get millions of subscribers you can be President. They just have to believe you aren’t lying to them. Zelensky explained to people in videos why he won’t be corrupt. He told them that he is already rich and if he tricks them one time they will never believe him again. That’s why even when he was super famous in Russia, he decided never to do a PR event there no matter how much money he was offered. Then no one would trust him anymore. He is smarter than to do something wrong one time and then be fucked. That’s why young people like him. He tells it to them straight.
Simon: First of all, you cannot be President from YouTube followers. Thats utterly idiotic. You need a substantial war chest and traditional support from many groups. People want to know your policy platform and understand your voting record. They need to feel confident you have good policies and have a voting record that shows it. That’s just how it works. Policies matter. <More incoherent sounds> To say that they don’t is <faces of disbelief and farm animal sounds> is completely…I just can’t even argue this…it’s that silly.
Dima: Simon, you are crazy. Why should anyone care what they say? Everyone can make up shit about their voting record either way. How can you have a plan now? AirBnb and Uber didn’t even exist for last president. So how can you know what’s next and make a plan? It’s useless man. In software, when we are wrong, we fix it and try something new. So what happens when a politician says something and it’s wrong. They just keep doing some stupid shit thats broken so no one yells at them for being a liar. Why? We have data now. Even if they want to tell the truth, they are lying. Haha. There is no way to predict anymore. Its too fast. It just matters if you trust the guy. Or girl.
At the risk of sounding like a total douchebag, the metaphor that came to mind while listening to this discussion was that my dad views the idea of government policy creation and implementation through the lens of a “waterfall approach”. My dad is particularly NOT tech savvy even for a 67 year old. He once called me and asked for some help with a “computer issue” and I told him to “enter a new URL and press refresh”. His response: “what is a URL and isn’t a refreshment a drink? What are you talking about”. The reason I shared this example is to illustrate how his world view has not been shaped by many of the technological changes that have come like a tsunami in the last 10 years nor is he as aware of the accelerating speed of that change. Returning to the “waterfall” idea- it also occured to me that this is still how most politicians view policy and the framework the general public uses to assess the success or failure of a particular politician. A “waterfall approach” involves doing a large amount of initial research on a given topic, developing a long term hypothesis and making a long term roadmap, then implementing it for many months or years and crossing your fingers hoping you are correct before releasing it long after you conceived of the idea. It leaves little room for feedback and iteration. This is how many companies used to work and how the government still works.
Fast forward to the rapidly evolving digital world we live in today and the “waterfall approach” has largely been replaced by concepts like “agile” and “design thinking” in business (but not government). Buzzwords aside, these newer philosophies advocate a much faster and more feedback oriented approach to development (whether that be a product, service, policy, etc) that accepts short term failure as an important input for long term success. It dawned on me during this road trip conversation that while these ideas seem “obvious” to me since I’ve been in the technology industry for such a long time, other people may not be aware of them at all…or even worse, they may seem counterintuitive and wrong until you’ve experienced them firsthand. Even though my dad was a business owner prior to the digital revolution, his lack of context around what rapid feedback even means or how you get it with digital data tools, made it very difficult for me to try and explain my perspective on the fact that was is truly broken about government is that they are operating with a waterfall process, while we are living in an exponentially changing world. So by the time a politician implements a new government policy, whatever it was even about is no longer relevant. And that it no longer makes sense to punish people for having the “wrong policy ideas”, but instead to punish them for having the wrong philosophy around how to find the right ones (faster feedback cycles and a new framework for testing ideas).
I am not sure if he is an outlier or I am an outlier, but I’d never been able to connect the dots before about what I think is wrong with our political discourse. There are definitely policy ideas that I think are right or are wrong, but I realize from my software experiences that I’m usually wrong and the only way I’ll ever be right is to find out as quickly as possible why I am wrong. We spend too much time bashing people for being wrong and not letting anyone change their mind. This is going to become increasingly untenable. The real challenge is that technology changed too fast for most people to understand how the world now works. Not what I expected to be thinking while driving through Wisconsin, but that’s usually how it goes.