What Trump Can Learn from Phelps

Watching Michael Phelps swim is like watching Van Gogh paint. You see not only the present but the past as well — the lifetime spent becoming great. Watching Donald Trump run for president can be like watching Van Gogh cut his ear off — it makes you cringe, scream, “Why?” and then stop watching.

Sure, the media is twisting his words, unfairly portraying him as a horned, pitchfork-toting Beelzebub, and draping his mistakes like blankets over whatever political fire Clinton has set. Is it fair that he has to run against the Democratic nominee, the current administration, and the mainstream media? No. But that’s the price of being a Republican. Is it fair that he has to run against the Billionaire club, the neocon Republicans, and the #NeverTrumpers? No, but that’s the price of opposing unlimited globalism.

You don’t just jump in the pool, start swimming, and win a gold medal because of some genetic predisposition to winning. 

Republican nominees and Olympic athletes have something in common: They need perfect preparation and perfect execution because one mistake could be the difference between winning it all and four years of misery.

Most of the attacks on Trump are tripe wrapped in nonsense — but Trump often makes it too easy. Make a mistake, pay the price, rinse and repeat is starting to look like his modus operandi. They punch him nine times in a row, and the tenth swing is still catching him off-guard. Political rhetoric should soar whenever possible, but — when he goes off-message — Trump’s rhetoric tends to crawl on its belly and leave a trail of slime. Those moments — those tiny mistakes — pass through the 1,000,000x lens of the media microscope and allow the Clinton campaign to control the conversation. Trump should have been on Hannity Tuesday night discussing whether or not Clinton and Sadiq Mateen are BFFs. Instead, he was on Hannity trying to explain a comment he made. In political arithmetic, explaining = losing.

Trump destroys Clinton on policy. She’s running a paradoxical campaign — the change-maker who will uphold the status quo. The Wall Street-funded anti-Wall Streeter. The job creator who’s never created a job. She says “I’m with you” — but her self-referential campaign slogan says you’re with her. She thinks lying about lying about her lies is the way to fix trustworthy numbers. This week, the Taliban-supporting father of an ISIS-inspired terrorist held up a sign on camera saying she’s the best for national security. Her campaign is a cautionary tale dumpster fires tell their kids.

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But nobody is seeing any of that because the mainstream media is focused on Trump’s latest gaffe.

The good news is, nobody has cast a vote yet. There are still three critical months left before Election Day, so Trump can channel Karl Rove circa 2012 and rely on all the polls being wrong, while hoping for a Wikileaks-sponsored October surprise — or he can understand that there are no silver medals in politics, learn two big lessons from Michael Phelps, and make his campaign great again.

Lesson #1: It takes hours of preparation to swim a 200-meter butterfly in 1:53.
If Michael Phelps had climbed out of the pool halfway through the race, kicked back in a lounge chair, and cracked open an ice-cold beer, he would have lost. Sounds absurd, but that’s basically what Trump is doing every time he goes off-message. He needs to be laser-focused on what matters.

You don’t just jump in the pool, start swimming, and win a gold medal because of some genetic predisposition to winning. Michael Phelps swims 50 miles a week and eats 12,000 calories a day. He lifts weights and trains 40 or more hours a week. His entire life revolves around being perfect so he can finish 1/10 of a second faster than other guy who also dedicated his entire life to winning the big race.

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Winners like Michael Phelps don’t get a cramp, flail around in the water, and claim that’s their style. They commit their lives to eliminating the tiniest of mistakes.

Trump is in a tough spot because it was, in part, his amateur status that won him the nomination. But the clock is ticking, and it’s time to go pro.

Lesson #2: It’s not about you. It’s about America.
Even if you’ve won the most gold medals since Leonidas of Rome in 152 B.C., showboating still makes you look small. When Michael Phelps won the 200-meter butterfly, he held his arms above his head and signaled to the audience that they should applaud more. I suppose it was the swimming equivalent of spiking the ball in the end zone or standing there watching your home run sail over the wall.

The eyes of the world rolled at the immaturity. If he wanted to conjure up the 2009 image of him chilling with his bong in a million minds at once: mission accomplished.

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He didn’t get that the moment wasn’t about him. Olympic athletes represent their countries in the games, not themselves. That’s why winning a gold medal should be a humbling experience, not an opportunity for self-aggrandizement.

Trump, who represents a political party and is making the case that he should represent the country, can appear to think it’s all about him. He thinks it matters which reporters are fair to him and which ones aren’t. He fights with people on Twitter. He gets bogged down in media games that are beneath a presidential nominee. He has to stop.

He’s said over and over that this election is about whether or not we’re going to have a country. If he truly believes that’s what’s at stake, he should be stone-cold focused on winning. Because, in many ways, that is what’s at stake. It’s the whole reason there are people in this country who consider themselves Republicans. It’s about America — the working-class people, the unemployed, our soldiers, our police officers, our safety, the Constitution, and our liberty. Not one second of this is about Donald Trump.