{"id":2873,"date":"2016-06-06T11:17:14","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T10:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=2873"},"modified":"2016-06-06T19:48:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T18:48:13","slug":"michelle-obama-v-s-the-populists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2016\/06\/06\/michelle-obama-v-s-the-populists\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Obama v.s. The Populists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As <strong>I was\u00a0driven this evening into New York City<\/strong> for the first module of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iese.edu\/en\/executive-education\/sectorial-management-programs\/media-entertainment\/introduction\/\">Advanced Management program in Media &amp; Entertainment<\/a>, <strong>the taxi driver asked\u00a0me if Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">While Donald Trump\u2019s shortcomings as a political leader are very clear and have been discussed in this space on a regular basis, the prevalence of a populist narrative in so many places at once gives us reason to pause and try to figure out what is going on. Some data points that may appear unrelated but I fear represent a pattern are as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Nicol\u00e1s Maduro continues to hold onto power years after the death of Hugo Chavez. While Chavez, initially,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>may have had the Venezuelan people\u2019s interest at heart, Maduro clearly represents what Foreign Policy magazine has called a mafia state that\u00a0only exists to enrich itself\u00a0and its\u00a0cronies in the name of the people.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In Peru, Keiko Fujimori is close\u00a0to becoming the next President of the country\u00a0as a result of yesterday&#8217;s election despite the fact that her father is convicted of mass murder and kidnapping in his efforts to turn\u00a0around what he felt\u00a0was a chaotic\u00a0period in Peru&#8217;s history.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2874 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2016\/06\/imgres.jpg\" alt=\"imgres\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/>In the Philippines, <strong>Rodrigo Duterte<\/strong> is moving into the the\u00a0<b>Malaca\u00f1ang Palace<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0and has said that he will oder the police to shoot to kill criminals without the idiocy of due process.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In Egypt, the Arab Spring has come full circle with a new military leader, <strong>Abdel Fattah el-Sisi<\/strong>, who has declared war on the <strong>Muslim Brotherhood<\/strong> and squashed all political opposition.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Spanish political parties failed to form a coalition government and are moving to new elections as a result of new populist movements upsetting the normal political calculus of left v.s. right.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Alexander Van der Bellen<\/strong>, a mild mannered green managed to win the Presdiential election in Austria by a razor thin margin against Norbert Hofer a far right, populist politician thanks only to the vote of Austrian\u2019s living abroad<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As discussed in a recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lavanguardia.com\/internacional\/20160603\/402237454568\/de-hitler-a-trump.html\">column<\/a>\u00a0in <em>La\u00a0Vanguardia<\/em>, which seemed to be partly inspired by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2016\/05\/09\/trump-hitler-reagan-or-berlusconi\/\">blog<\/a>\u00a0in this space comparing Trump\u2019s political rise to that of Adolf Hitler, there is something remarkable and very disturbing going on in international politics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Faced with a very complex and confusing world, <strong>people seem drawn to politicians offering an easy way out. Someone to hate. Someone to blame<\/strong>. The promise of being great again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The <strong>current geo-political situation is at its most\u00a0complex since the end of the World War II<\/strong> and the pace of economic change, largely caused by globalisation and digitalisation has left many people perplexed, scared and ready to hear the words of the populists on the left or the right<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The challenge for people who understand the complexities of this world such as Hilary Clinton is to be able to articulate a positive vision of the future despite its complexity. Although she is not running for office in this election cycle, <strong>Michelle Obama<\/strong> did just that in a recent commencement address at the City College of New York\u00a0which was sent to me by one of my daughters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><iframe class='xavier' width='100%' height='400' frameborder='0' allow='fullscreen' allowfullscreen src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MgqAhn0a-tk'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In my view only if all of us who see the world&#8217;s\u00a0complexity as an opportunity rather than a threat and our diversity as our greatest strength speak out, we will have a chance to defeat the populists and the hate mongers.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I was\u00a0driven this evening into New York City for the first module of the\u00a0Advanced Management program in Media &amp; Entertainment, the taxi driver asked\u00a0me if Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. While Donald Trump\u2019s shortcomings as a political leader are very clear and have been discussed in this space [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26749],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","megacategoria-mc-globalization"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2873"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2879,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2873\/revisions\/2879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}