In The Conversation, David Brooks and Gail Collins talk between columns every Wednesday.
Tags:
Note: Dick Cavett is filling in for Gail Collins, who is on vacation.
Dick Cavett: David, your use of the word “trust” in our last conversation has haunted me through the week. It’s a square-sounding word. Like one of those boring topics for discussion around the fire at church camp.
Your question: Have we lost trust with the “national project?” produces a galvanic skin response. You’ve got me thinking that “trust” may just be the word. You cited a relevant book, I can too: it’s a delightfully readable and significant one for the business world about customer relations, written by, I confess, friends of mine. “Rules to Break and Laws to Follow,” by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers.
Chapter 7 is all about trust, about its vital importance, with examples of its proper use leading to vast success (the miraculous eBay, for example) and the perils and costs when trust is undervalued and lost. (China floods us with faulty tires and poisonous toys.) Those for whom trust is fine morally are shown that it, as in Ben Franklin’s morally neutral phrase, is also good “policy.” It works.
David Brooks: Dick, a couple of years ago, the World Bank completed a study called “Where Is the Wealth of Nations?” The economists there calculated that in poorer countries, most wealth is tangible — land, resources, that sort of thing. But for richer nations, 80 percent or so was intangible — institutions, laws and attitudes.
And while we’re title-dropping, let me mention a book by Francis Fukuyama, simply called “Trust.” He uses the term, “spontaneous sociability” to measure how quickly and naturally people cooperate in various societies. People have different cooperating styles depending on their culture. one of the points he makes about America is that we think of ourselves as a highly individualistic country, but that’s false consciousness. Actually, we are phenomenally cooperative and social.
Dick Cavett: In that same book, “Rules to Break and Laws to Follow,” Mr. Peppers and Ms. Rogers go on to show how vanished trust can be regained with proper handling and technique. And equally important, how not to attempt redemption: cover-up, denial, lying ads, etc. I’m sending copies to the next three generations of the Toyoda family, sincerely hoping hara-kiri doesn’t intervene to trim the family bonsai tree.
Have you, David, personally lost trust with the national project? I have. The truth: which would be easier to come up with in a “your money or your life?” moment? Twenty reasons why we might have lost trust, or three why we shouldn’t? You first.
David Brooks: I’d say that trust is about reciprocity. About establishing a pattern of communication and then cooperative volleys that get coated by emotional and moral commitment.
I think Toyota is doing a decent job of handling this problem. Messing up shouldn’t destroy trust, as long as a partner or company uses it as an occasion for reciprocity. I’d say the ads Toyota is running and the public apologies they are making have been pretty effective at restoring the relationships they depend on.
Dick Cavett: In view of that, Mr. Peppers and Ms. Rogers would advise stricken Toyota to do more to re-woo disaffected customers than just customary apologies and reform — to do something “extra” and original. Something like five years of free maintenance, a paid vacation, school tuition? Maybe fun-designed safety helmets?
David, I’m sure you agree that one searching for reasons to be pessimistic about our country’s various shortcomings needn’t long for Sherlock Holmes to find a few. Our crumbling infrastructure, those fat cat bonuses to the filthy rich against a coast-to-coast landscape of foreclosure and unpayable medical bills, national obesity, money-gluttonous drug companies that make pills for pennies and sell them for hundreds of dollars each. Not forgetting our fatal attraction to hopeless wars, continually thinning the numbers of brave American youth, “giving” their lives for what again? What therein might inspire trust? I’m rooming with Spengler next semester.
Yet, it’s nice, isn’t it, when something happens that points to this country’s unique greatness? Where else in the world could a small boy’s dream of becoming a flight controller at Kennedy Airport come true? While still a small boy?
(May we leave trust and marriage for another time? Maybe we could get some ladies in here: Mesdames Woods, Edwards, Spitzer, Paterson, Clinton, Giuliani, Sanford, Vitter [limited space prevents complete list]. Many of Mr. Peppers and Ms. Rogers prescriptive principles could well apply to wedlock and its woes. [See "Lying."])
David Brooks: Dick, there you’ve got me. My own trust in our political leaders is at a personal low. And I actually know and like these people. I just think they are trapped in a system that buries their good qualities and brings out the bad. For the first time in my life, I think there is a possibility of a serious third party in America.
Dick Cavett: Well, said, old mole. A third party or fourth might help rid us of that famous mistaken notion that there are two sides to every question. Some have six. Some have one side. Example? Is this an interesting column?
And sir, how do you suppose we both managed to toss around the word “culture” last week without reference, or even allusion, to Hermann Goering? I mean his infamous “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun.”
I decided to check it out, searched and unearthed it in less time than it took to find Dr. Livingstone. At the risk of upsetting Goering fans, it seems the notorious quote is not even really his after all. The rotund slyboots stole it from a German play by a Hanns Johst (the ever-popular?) titled “Schlageter,” which was performed for Hitler’s birthday in 1933.
It goes: “Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning,” which translates as, “When I hear the word culture … I release the safety catch on my Browning.” I include it here, should you wish to enliven a cocktail party chat. What do you make of it? Opposition to liberal arts types, among other things?
Quite a quote isn’t it? Was there ever a finer example of Teutonic cast-iron levity?
David Brooks: Dick, how did you know? I often enliven cocktail parties with my Goering stories. I’ve always taken that quotation as the essence of 20th century barbarism — trying to reduce historical forces to materialism and ignoring spiritual ones.
Of course, now I’m trying to imagine what sort of play one would write in honor of the Fuhrer’s birthday. I’m guessing he wasn’t a big fan of “The Importance of Being Earnest” and such fare.
Dick Cavett: D’accord, mon vieux. I don’t see Oscar and Adolph as pals on very many levels.
You are aware that your wording above in “I often enliven” is in perfect Groucho phrasing and meter. Thereto, a quickie. The director Sam Wood, disparaging Groucho’s work on the movie set, said, in front of cast and crew:
Sam Wood: You can’t make an actor out of clay.
Groucho Marx: Nor a director out of Wood.