‘Ditch Trump’ – meaning what, for whom?

And a lesson for corporate governance, too

Nikki Haley, by Tom Williams, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

UPDATE: Haley’s withdrawal from the contest after Super Tuesday’s outcome came without an endorsement of Trump. But it didn’t bring a rejection of him, either. Instead, Haley asked that Trump listen to the Republicans who didn’t support him, and learn. Fence-sitting? That’s an uncomfortable position, one easily compromised.

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A recent piece in the New York Times described Nikki Haley as being in the “last ditch” of her faltering campaign to win the Republican nomination for president. She had lost two more primary elections – in her home state of South Carolina and the crucial swing state of Michigan. Her main funders had now withdrawn financial support, but she vowed to stay in the race. The columnist Bret Stephens went on to remind us of the origin of the phrase “last ditch”.

Stephens, a Republican-leaning but anti-Trump columnist at the Times, notes that the “last ditch” is a phrase used by William of Orange in 1672, chief magistrate of the Dutch Republic, to describe how, rather than surrendering to the invading French, he would fight from “the last ditch”. William’s campaign succeeded, and he was later invited to become William III of England (and William II of Scotland) in a troubled time in British history.

Stephens did not mention, however, another colloquial use of “ditch” – when you “ditch” someone or something. That usage as a verb appears during the early years of military flight, in the air campaign fought across the English Channel and the North Sea in the First World War, the era of trench warfare – another ditch – and its aftermath. A pilot of a stricken plane would fly his aircraft into the “ditch” – the deep waters separating the British Isles from the continent. It was an act of self-sacrifice to avoid crashing on land, where innocent civilians might be hurt.

Both metaphors invoke a fight to the finish, though with differing outcomes for those fighting.

• William’s victory and enthronement across the North Sea saw the Dutch retain independence and England move towards democracy and a stronger rule of law. William III, acting with his wife, Queen Mary as the combined monarchy of “William and Mary”, ushered in reforms that set Parliament on a path to become the main lawgiver. Close ties across the sea persist. The Netherlands and the United Kingdom each became a seat of classical liberalism and beacons of liberty (with large bumps along the way, to be sure).

• The airmen’s valour became a model of honourable conduct of warfare, and the failure to do so an indicator of a vicious enemy and an object of distain.

Whether Haley’s campaign will prove not just honourable but honoured is an open question. But her stance for now lets us hope for a beneficial outcome of principled action and calm, rational debate. It also reminds us of a time when governance involved governing one’s own actions for the benefit of others – of personal restraint and self-sacrifice for a greater good.

Parallels for corporate governance? I think so, though it’s hard to find well-known exemplars. And let’s remember that Donald Trump was, and is, in charge of a large corporation that he rules as sovereign, and that his term as US President started with a summit of corporate CEOs (Nordberg, 2017; see also https://ssrn.com/abstract=2913116).

Many years ago, when I worked as a journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, I met two CEOs whom I came to admire as people when I wasn’t expecting to.

One governed his listed corporation as a sovereign: an industrialist who was chief executive as well as principal shareholder. He reported to a board of directors who reported to him. He was, however, a model of self-restraint as well as fierce ambition – for the company, much more than for himself. He went on to orchestrate an industry-transforming, cross-border merger that saw him lose power but let the combined company thrive. His name wasn’t William, but it might have been.

The other led a company, listed but with a widely dispersed institutional shareholder base, a firm at the cutting edge of its field – materials science. I interviewed him just after he became CEO. He explained that he had joined the company fresh out of university as a scientist, reluctantly moved from the lab into sales support and then into line management, before taking the top seat. A lot of the products it sold, including ones he had invented, went into military aircraft. He piloted the firm to global leadership in its niche. Even as CEO he longed to get back to the lab. Several years later, he “retired” at what seemed an unusually young age.

Having lost sight of him, I’ve often wondered: Did the company “ditch” him?

Nordberg, D. (2017). First and Second Drafts of History: The Case of Trump, Foucault and Pre-Modern Governance. Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, 9(2), 107-117. doi:10.22381/GHIR9220175