While Republican Donald Trump has said he’s not submitting to the usual prep for the first debate, his campaign announced it developed a psychological profile that presumably suggests ways for him to defeat Hillary Clinton on the stage at Hofstra University.
By contrast, Clinton’s camp needn’t work hard to find the keys to Trump’s psyche. He has been putting them on display for many years.
Less controlled and more emotional than a typical politician, Trump suffers from the lack of “observing ego” so commonly seen in those who have lived their entire lives in the rarified air of extreme wealth.
Isolated in an echo chamber where dissent is limited by others’ desire to stay in his good graces, Trump has faced little disagreement when he describes himself as a brilliant mind, a “really rich” winner and others as awful losers. The same goes for his accusation that his opponents are corrupt liars and that he “will always tell you the truth.”
Many viewers will tune into the debate expecting to see Trump use his trademark trash-talk style to unnerve Clinton. He did this to great effect during the GOP primary debates and thus dispatched “lyin'” Ted Cruz, “low-energy Jeb Bush, and “little” Marco Rubio. However, those events were game show versions of debates and featured so many candidates that Trump’s methods worked well.
Against Clinton in an arena where he will be asked to speak at length, he must speak in paragraphs, not catchphrases and cope with a single opponent with far more relevant experiences. He has also supplied her with the means to get under his thin skin by exploiting the very qualities he believes make him special.
Three ways to rattle Trump
With his extremely vocal and lifelong campaign to persuade the world that he is a “winner,” Donald Trump has hinted, too many times to count, that he is afraid that he is actually a loser. Trump’s fear of losing was planted in his heart by his father, who demanded that he prevail in every contest and, when he failed to succeed at the private academy he attended in Queens, banished him to a harsh military academy in Upstate New York.
For the rest of his life Trump has equated losing with a fate worse than death and thus, insisted that he was a natural-born winner. He keeps score with money, and self-proclaimed business successes.
Clinton can deflate the fiction of Trump-as-winner by noting that no one actually knows Trump’s real financial condition because the data is privately held and he won’t release his tax returns, which every candidate since 1972 has done. Clinton may also recount his many losses, especially his four corporate bankruptcies. These failures hurt thousands of investors, vendors, and employees and cast a long shadow on Trump’s claim to be a great winner.
The second way Clinton can upset Trump’s game would be to call into doubt his claim to be a ‘truth-teller.’ Trump calls others liars because dishonesty is such a big part of his own character that he appears to assume it is a universal human trait. This element of Trump’s self-constructed personality would be the easiest to dismantle because he has made a lifelong practice of lying about everything from his heritage — he used to falsely claim to be Swedish — to his identity, as reporters learned when they discovered he telephoned them using fake names.
But Clinton needn’t go back very far to collect Trump lies.
In just the past week, he repeated his oft-stated lie about opposing the Iraq War before it began and he came up with a new one, falsely stating that Clinton failed to criticize Muslim jihadists.
A third soft spot that Trump has offered to Clinton can be found in his claim to superior strength and energy. At age 70, Donald Trump is not possessed of superhuman physical gifts. He is a person who feels the aches and pains and fatigue of his years and, because he is vain, these very normal experiences worry him a great deal.
This is why he criticizes others for their supposed physical shortcomings, whether it is their energy level or their height. At some points in the GOP debates, which were far less demanding than the one-on-one challenge he faces at Hofstra, Trump showed signs of fatigue.
At some point his energy will flag during his contest with Clinton and she can offer a humorous reminder to the audience. This is just what the elder Ronald Reagan did in 1984 when he told Walter Mondale he wouldn’t hold his “youth and inexperience” against him.
Lies and Mockery
Advisors may impress upon Trump the idea that all he has to do is “act presidential” because voters need to see that he is up to the job. Success in this effort, as he stands next to Clinton, could be all that he needs. But if things start going poorly for Trump, and he senses that he is losing, he may revert to type, summoning half-truths and outright lies as facts and trying to define Clinton by calling her names. (Who can doubt that he’ll have a dozen tweet-sized quips ready for this purpose?)
He will likely deny his own record on everything from his shadowy business practices to statements he has made on the campaign trail, and that can be accessed in a matter of moments on the Internet.
If the GOP primaries proved anything it was Trump’s ability to prevail by abandoning the norms of political debate. Clinton is no better at brawling than the likes of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was readily dispatched by Trump, so she would do well to stick to her own game, which is what she has been doing with her thorough debate preparation.
If the genuine Trump is outspoken and aggressive, the genuine Clinton is wonky and detail-oriented. This approach doesn’t preclude her from correcting her opponent’s distortions and misstatement of fact, but if she engages in a war of barbs and emotion, she will lose. No one gets the better of Trump in a fact-free fight and, as a woman, Clinton is at a disadvantage when it comes to expressing emotion. A man who speaks stridently is seen as forthright. A woman who does it is called something very different.
Clinton must have two objectives tonight. One is that she must show that Trump is less prepared than she is, and less knowledgeable, without alienating voters who want to believe that she lacks the common touch.
The other is that she must resist being baited into Trump’s realm of insults and distortions. On both counts, she may be well-served by all her earnest preparation.
In blunt terms, her biggest risk on a night that promises a Super-Bowl-sized audience is seeming a bit staid and boring. If this happens, she’ll have time to recover.
But for Trump, a bad performance that shows him to be either ignorant or undisciplined will have a much more serious effect. A decisive loss by a man whose identity is wrapped up in winning could be the beginning of the end for him.