The title of the book was plain: “Never Give Up: How I Turned my Biggest Challenges Into Success.
The author? Donald J. Trump (with Meredith McIver).
The book comes to mind as House Republicans finally got their act together and — with the President personally summoning them to the White House in Art of the Deal style — finally passed a health care bill. The media — which only weeks ago was pronouncing the health care reform bill dead as a door nail — was in full retreat.
Much attention during the last campaign — and for that matter since — has been lavished on Trump’s authorship of The Art of the Deal. A book devoted to, well, deal making. Constantly overlooked is another Trump book, this one written in the style of the President’s one-time pastor, the late Reverend Norman Vincent Peale. It was Peale, of course, who famously wrote the ground breaking self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952. The Trump version of Peale’s book was Never Give Up, and the book’s philosophy is something Trump has brought not only to the health care debate but his entire campaign for the presidency, a campaign in which, from beginning to end, his chances for victory were repeatedly dismissed.
The book has 41 short chapters, with a number of chapters ending with a closing thought from “Coach Trump.” Among those chapters:
Among other things “Coach Trump” says in this book:
Be resilient. Sometimes a challenge will knock you down. Your plan may be a bust or your goal may be unattainable for a time; you may be stopped in your tracks. Get back on the horse! Deciding to try again is the first step toward getting it right the next time.
Why pay attention here?
Because with variation on these themes this is exactly how Trump faced the supposed “defeat” of the health care bill the other week. As long as President Trump is in the White House challenges will be coming down the road on an almost daily — if not hourly — basis. As they do for all presidents. But what his critics are missing — as they have clearly missed in discussions of the health care bill when it was pulled from the floor the other week — is that Trump’s mindset is exactly as he writes and advises in his book.
Every single challenge he faces as president is greeted with this “Never Give Up” state of mind. Whatever the objective, whatever the goal, Trump is going to take it head on — and if he fails he will re-group and come back. Over, and over and over again. Until his mission of the moment is accomplished.
Suffice to say this is something rarely seen in Washington. Politicians who get blasted for taking A, B, or C position or who lose in some sort of perceived spectacular fashion all too frequently abandon ship. As it were — to mix metaphors — having been burned touching the hot stove they rarely return to that area of the political kitchen again.
Not so with Trump. His Never Give Up mentality took him from that escalator ride in Trump Tower in June of 2015 to the presidency in November of 2016 with all manner of increasingly fierce opponents along the way.
And now, the first serious legislative results of this Trumpian mindset are in.
The House has finally passed the first stage of the health care reform battle. The vote: 217-213.
And now? To the Senate. Where the champion of Never Give Up will start all over again.