Don't Get Cocky

I read Peggy Noonan's opinion in the WSJ this morning, and she nailed it.  "Soleimani had it coming, but don't get cocky." I just started subscribing to the WSJ after being away for several years.  I now remember what I like about it.  There is always a nice balance of opinions, clearly with a strongly conservative leaning.  But that's ok, I'm liberal enough at heart (which my conservative friends easily remind me of), that it's good for me to read things from a conservative perspective.  Besides, there is an underlying conservative in me, it comes out in various ways. But that's a topic for another day.

Today, I was struck by the concept of not getting cocky.  Noonan's perspective is that trump and his merry band (my words) got lucky this time.  I agree.  I don't think that they have a better analytic process that knew how the Iranians would react.  I am willing to acknowledge, as one of my friends suggested, that trump does have a crazily innate sense of intuition when it comes to politics.  And, in the end, this was a political decision.  Trump did the political calculus and went for it.  President's George W. Bush and Obama didn't make the same decision for analytical reasons.  They were concerned that the Iranians would overreact.  They didn't want to take that chance. Trump doesn't really care about taking chances.  He cares about himself and his political intuition.  I agree with Peggy Noonan, he got lucky.  Now, we have to hope that he doesn't get cocky.

There is a balance in life when it comes to the line between confidence and cockiness.  I'll admit, I'm sure that there have been times in my life and career that I've crossed that line.  One of my friends likes to remind me of a time that I was giving a talk and someone asked me how I knew the answer to a question.  My response was that I just did!  That's confidence.  It can also be cockiness.  One of my favorite lines from a 1960's television show, "The Guns of Will Sonnett," was "No brag, just fact."  If you have succeeded in something, or you have the objective or even subjective data to back it up, you can speak from a base of knowledge, and even certainty at times.  At the same time, I often say, I realize every day how little I know.  There's a reason for that.  Just because we know something now, doesn't always mean that it will always be true.  Peggy Noonan completed her article with the following, "What would be good to see now is modesty--the modesty of serious people who know they got lucky."  Unfortunately, we won't ever see that in donald trump.  But, I can remember to try to live by that concept in my own life and career.  I'll try not to be too cocky.