by Eric McErlain

Scott Adams at IBM Connect 2014. Photo by ibmphoto24 used under Creative Commons license.

Political wags are falling all over themselves these days trying to cobble together a narrative to explain the success of the insurgent presidential campaigns of Donald Trump (R-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), albeit while expressing varying degrees of alarm and disbelief.

But well before any of the big guns of punditry began taking their prospects seriously, there was one unexpected source who chimed in with some surprising insights. I’m talking about Scott Adams, better known as the cartoonist behind the nationally popular comic strip, Dilbert.

It was back in July that Adams first took note of Trump on his Dilbert blog, but the best place to start is the “Clown Genius,” post he published later in August. After calling Trump a “narcissistic blow hard,” Adams got down to business explaining exactly how Trump has been able to leverage his high-level persuasion skills into a massive lead in the polls:

[T]here is an eerie consistency to his success so far. Is there a method to it? Is there some sort of system at work under the hood? Probably yes. Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. (Most of you know I am a trained hypnotist and this topic is a hobby of mine.) For starters, Trump literally wrote the book on negotiating, called The Art of the Deal. So we know he is familiar with the finer points of persuasion. For our purposes today, persuasion, hypnosis, and negotiating all share a common set of tools, so I will conflate them. Would Trump use his negotiation and persuasion skills in the campaign? Of course he would. And we expect him to do just that. But where is the smoking gun of his persuasion? Where is his technique laid out for us to see. Everywhere.

I won’t spoil the rest, but needless to say you ought to read it right now. For that matter, you ought to go back and read everything Adams has written about Trump. It’s a heck of an education on persuasion, and it will take less time than reading the business classic, Getting to Yes.

Adams’ punditry isn’t limited to the right side of the political spectrum. He’s taken a hard look at Democratic race too, and recently chimed in positively concerning the campaign ad that Sanders released yesterday.

Adams later elaborated back on his blog:

As I have taught you, persuasion can be ranked like this: 1. Identity (best) 2. Analogy (okay) 3. Reason (useless) Bernie Sanders had been operating in the lower two categories along with Hillary Clinton. But his new ad, set to a Simon and Garfunkel tune, is pure identity (America!) and pure gold.

Adams hasn’t put on his pundit’s hat for its own sake. He’s not only a cartoonist, he’s a best-selling author and a savvy online marketer. If the folks at Zignal are to be believed, Trump and Sanders are the clear leaders in online media buzz. If you can find a way to tie your content to either of them, you’re inevitably going to drive traffic to your online properties and convert a portion of that traffic into sales. Given the life we’ve seen in both the Trump and Sanders campaigns, I’m guessing Adams will be riding the news cycle to increased attention and online book sales for some time to come.