You don't want to fail in public. This is why acts are wary of stretching to play larger venues. Nothing puts a stink upon your act like empty seats. Forget the buzz on the outside, the business and the social media scuttlebutt, the attendees are also turned off. What are they doing there if everybody else decided to stay home? Are they no longer hip? Sure, there's always a hard core that sees its isolation from the rest as a badge of honor, but they don't stage their events in stadiums. Now if you were around in 1976... It was a weird era. There'd been talk about the Bicentennial for years, but in the wake of Watergate everybody was still licking their wounds. The focus ultimately was on light and breezy, fun, no heaviness involved. Ford was now president and people didn't want any disruption, they were sick of arguing. The war was finally over and it was only a few years before the go-go eighties. The late seventies is when the boomers grew up, looked in the mirror and questioned how they were going to get ahead in the future. It was no longer all for one. There was no common rallying cry. This is when the seeds of the hedonistic eighties were planted, not that we knew it at the time. But one thing was for sure, everybody still believed in the American Dream, thought if they put their nose to the grindstone they could get ahead, and there was no doubt that America was the greatest country in the world. We were the land of opportunity, we ruled. July 4, 1976 if not completely flat, certainly was not memorable. But now it's fifty years later and... About twelve months back people stated talking to me about the events they were planning to celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation. Now you've got to know that events like this require a lot of heavy lifting, and a ton of money. Good intentions are not enough. And it's hard to rally people around a generic rallying cry. Look at music festivals... They rarely start with a bang, you need to build them over years, convince the public they're worth attending, so to plan for one day of events? At least Trump had the right idea, to have an extended celebration. But he could not read the room, he had more power than ever before, but despite the ability to quash naysayers, the passion for him and his projects was waning. Now it's the little things that get you in the end. The war in Iran? Still incomprehensible to most people. Americans famously lack passports, and many believe that Iran is a third world nation, even though that could not be further from the truth, and all they really want is for gas prices to come down and for inflation to be tamed. But the algae in the Reflecting Pool... Did the Reflecting Pool need fixing? Could be, but like with the destruction of the Esat Wing, we didn't hear about it until it was happening, and the no-bid contract stuck in the craw of those leaning left, but it was business as usual. Until the algae bloomed. First there was the question of the cause. But we were told the problem would be rectified quickly. And when this turned out not to be the case, it was blamed on bad actors, criminals...and if there's one person who believes that, they must be related to Trump, or one of the naysayers in Congress. The thing is when you take action, there's always a potential for failure. Which is why it's a fool's errand to talk about cutting spending, making government smaller. Sure, do your best to control costs, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, i.e. fire people and cancel plans. As for the public at large, they like government services, they don't like to pay taxes, but you can't have it both ways. So now you've got a green Reflecting Pool with your mad next door neighbor coming out and blaming those pesky neighborhood kids. What would even be the motivation? And it turns out if you were anywhere near the neighborhood, you were at risk of being arrested. Furthermore, with cameras everywhere, wouldn't there be footage? And if not, why not? So then it comes down to the two week celebration of America 250 on the Mall. Some call it a World's Fair. But there's a reason there hasn't been a World's Fair for eons, everything new can be displayed and experienced on the internet, you don't have to travel to see something, you just have to log on. As for a raw celebration/party... I don't know who came up with this fakakta idea, but it would have been better to get the experts involved. Hand concerts to AEG or Live Nation, which doesn't seem like much of a stretch since Michael Rapino actually spoke with Trump. And until you've established the gravitas of your festival, attendance is based on headliners. Who are the headliners? One thing about the Bicentennial, everyone did their best to make it bipartisan. Then again, as much as we were divided, we were united by the resignation of Nixon, we were coming together. Meanwhile, J.D. Vance is now trying to rehabilitate Nixon, talk about rewriting history... Then there were the musical acts... When they started to cancel, Trump could have done a mea culpa, said it was not a MAGA event, but instead he doubled-down, said he would be the headliner. So now there was no talent and a great swath of the public was rubbed the wrong way. As for coming to a carnival for booths and a Ferris wheel... In the modern era a Ferris wheel is not far away, nor are the booths that titillate you for a moment while they take your money. And if you want to spend, who wants to go to D.C. in the summer? I mean if you really want to endure the heat, you'll go to Disney World. This was a foreseeable failure, and there could have been some course correction, but like last week with the housing bill, Trump is stonewalling. Now in business they tell you not to do this, that it's about the customer's mind rather than the company's. Nordstrom and Costco will take almost anything back, they want to keep a customer. But if you're hemorrhaging customers... That's the thing about businesses, they fade very quickly when the public starts to turn on them, especially in the modern world, where word of mouth is on steroids online. It's all about soft power. Feelings. But Trump seemed to miss the memo. Now whatever you think about Trump, pictures don't lie. Scratch that, in the AI era, pictures lie all the time. But I've yet to see a deepfake showing the Mall crowded with attendees. And it's even worse, since so few people are there, there's no FOMO amongst the rest of the populace. So Trump is failing in plain sight. It's not like he can declare bankruptcy and start over. America isn't a business. Now never in my lifetime have Americans been so misinformed. The truth is fungible, facts are up for debate. But the failure of the celebration on the National Mall is not. No one can defend it. But expect Trump to come out and blame someone for the failure imminently, like he did with the Reflecting Pool. The truth is America is experiencing generational change, and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats truly see this, never mind want it or are effectively countering it, or god forbid embracing it. The younger, digital-savvy generations, are taking over. Meanwhile, everybody over the age of 50, especially those with a megaphone, can't stop sh*tting on the internet and social media, digital communications. It's just like our parents railed against rock music back in the sixties. Utterly laughable if you're a youngster. You need to disrupt yourself to stay in power, but both parties are calcified. Much of America is tuning out the D.C. circus. But when the Reflecting Pool is green and the Mall is empty, only Karoline Leavitt could spin this positively. Everybody else cringes, if they don't laugh outright. They see an out of touch Administration in an out of touch city. Maybe if they had rappers and influencers, maybe if they met the younger generations halfway... But no, it's Lee Greenwood or the equivalent twenty four seven. The game is to have plausible deniability. But there's no way Trump and his cronies can spin the disaster of the Great American State Fair positively. And people may feel positive about Coachella, but they have mixed feelings about state fairs anyway. What a disaster. Which will seep into Trump's presidency just like algae took over the Reflecting Pool. -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
