
When should you escalate?
One of my core principles in my personal life is to escalate the negative as little as possible. That has made me relatively happy, because most of my energies stay focused on positive interactions.
But is it good politics? Can you ever win that way?
That’s the key question for any politician—and perhaps no modern pol is as comfortable with brinkmanship and escalation than Donald Trump.
Right now we see it most dramatically when it comes to our universities, specifically Harvard, which is refusing to accede to his varying demands.
The quad has been the site of executive overreach before.