Ride for the Brand

Back in August of 2016, media provocateur Steve Bannon, then the executive chairman of Breitbart News, was tapped to head Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. After Trump’s election victory in November of 2016, Bannon was rewarded for his efforts by being appointed as the chief strategist and senior counsel to the new United States President – not a bad rise for someone who started in his 20’s as an officer in the Navy.

But by August of 2017, barely a year after gaining the ear of the most powerful person in the world, Bannon was out. Not just out, out, or “thanks for your service, but we don’t need you anymore” out, but flaming-body-thrown-from-a-20th-floor-window out.

So what can we learn, and what should we learn, from Steve Bannon’s spectacular rise and fall? A lot.

 

“What does it mean when they say ‘ride for the brand’?”

 

A while back, I was at a Rotary club meeting that had a mustachioed westerner as the guest speaker. He read a cowboy poem by Paul Harwitz called Ride for the Brand. In the poem, a wizened old ranch hand explains to a young cowboy what it means to be a team player. It’s an unforgettable poem to read, something of a very short, western version of Robert Greene’s book The 48 Laws of Power.

“It means a lot of different things, son,” begins the poem. “Hard work, trust, respect, taking and giving.” Bannon undoubtedly built his career on hard work, but it’s the trust, respect, taking, and giving where he lost himself.

 

“It means you help your neighbors and your friends”

 

I knew Bannon’s days were numbered shortly after Trump’s inauguration when Bannon appeared on a February 2017 cover of Time Magazine with a caption reading “The Great Manipulator.” Why he thought an image seemingly portraying himself as a dubious, dark puppet-master of the White House on a national magazine was a good idea, who knows. Any lay-person would see that trying to outshine Trump and his family members was a bad idea. “Cause you’re all riding for the same outfit” the Harwitz poem goes, “and you’re all striving together to benefit it.”

Bannon’s deliberate and continuous violations of Greene’s first law – never outshine the master – was a slap in the face to all of the people, countless people, who working to get Trump in the White House. As individuals, our words and actions solely reflect on ourselves. We take the credit or blame for their impact. But when we accept membership onto a team, we have to put our individual desires aside, far below the needs of the group.

Bannon never seemed to get this, and if he did, he deliberately chose not to be a team player. Just ten days after Trump won the presidency, Bannon told Michael Wolff of the Hollywood Reporter “Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power…” He fought with General McMaster, Trump’s pick for national security advisor. He lobbied Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, a move opposed by Ivanka. He announced that a trade war with China had begun. He bragged about fighting with Trump’s economic adviser, Gary Cohn. He bragged that his own news company, Breitbart, was a platform for the alt-right. The list goes on.

Everything that Bannon did was in the interest of his own aspirations, not those of the Trump team. As team members, our words and actions reflect on the team, and the cost of Bannon’s words fell squarely on the Trump administration. Every other day the White House press secretary had to stamp out flames and explain away something that Bannon had said.

On August 18, Bannon time at the White House was over.

 

“It means you can be trusted… to do the chores… no matter how hard”

 

Trust is something that extends past the point in time when it was first established. Things said in confidence should remain that way, indefinitely. When you’re seen as someone who can’t be trusted to keep another person’s secret, then you can’t be trusted to keep anyone’s

Steve Bannon’s worst character trait was just that: he couldn’t be trusted. After Bannon’s departure from the White House, he continued to salt and scorch the earth, undermining his own power and influence in the process.

During Bannon’s time at the White House, personal disputes that should have occurred face-to-face behind closed doors were instead continually leaked to the press. Instances of Bannon calling Jared Kushner a “cuck” and a Democrat were publicized, undermining Kushner and building resentment among the White House team towards Bannon.

While Bannon saw himself as a kingmaker, free to try to damage and undermine his imagined enemies by revealing their secrets, in reality he was only hurting himself.

 

“It means you don’t never foul up the land”

Bannon’s self-immolation didn’t stop after his departure from the White House. He returned to Breitbart to again be executive chairman. Not satisfied with screwing himself out of the White House, he continued to be a pariah.

He went against the national republican party and Trump’s pick, Luther Strange, in the Alabama senate primary, helping Roy Moore win instead. Moore and Bannon soon become a national embarrassment for the Republican party when, on November 9th, Moore was accused by numerous women of sexual misconduct against teenager girls. Bannon violated Greene’s tenth law – avoid the unhappy and unlucky – in a big way when he doubled down on his support of Moore. Moore soon lost what should have been a safe senate seat in Alabama.

On December 20, a scathing article by Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman chronicled the innumerable ways Bannon had worked to undermine his former boss and White House team. He said that the Trump presidency was over, derided Trump’s abilities to govern, attacked Republican party leaders, gave high expectations that Trump would be impeached, and referred to Trump as an 11-year old child.

Bannon truly reached radioactive waste-status when, on January 5th of 2018, Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the White House was released. The book painted a negative view of Trump for being mentally unstable and unsuited to be President. Bannon was quoted calling Donald Trump Junior  “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”. He was also quoted as calling Ivanka, in a published book of all places, “dumb as a brick.” Bannon failed to heed Greene’s fourth rule of power – always say less than necessary, and it cost him dearly.

Four days later, on January 9th, Bannon stepped down as executive chair of Breitbart.

 

“It means you keep searching for that one last stray”

 

Harwitz emphasizes that a cowboy cannot stop working until the work is done. Bannon’s work of riding the political range to find the last stray calf will remain unfinished. For whatever reasons, he threw his saddle into the river and shot his horse instead of focusing on the opportunities right in front of him. No matter what your political views are, there were some positive goals that Bannon wished to achieve that, at this point, are unlikely to happen:

“It’s everything related to jobs,” Bannon told Michael Wolff days after Trump won the election. “I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up… It will be as exciting as the 1930s…”

Bannon’s failure to ride for the Trump brand became his undoing, and his epic rise and fall from power will likely overshadow his life’s work and become his lasting legacy. No matter where you find yourself in life, you are still only one part of a larger team, and a replaceable part at that. “So saddle up. Toughen-up. Cowboy-up. Be a man. Ride for the brand.”