Trump can’t be quite the same brawler against Hillary Clinton. She’ll be prepared for that. And he won’t have a loud supportive audience. But he shouldn’t be calm and presidential. He has to play the part of the high-energy populist. He also must maintain that controlled aggression throughout the night. In the last handful of GOP debates, with fewer opponents, Trump seemed to get bored and to drag by the end.
To say that Trump should tone it all down is to say that he should use his debate performance to draw a contrast with his own reputation, or with the low expectations of the media and the audience. That’s a mistake. Trump is behind. He needs to make his contrast with Clinton. He needs to make his brand of crazy seem more connected to the needs of our present moment than Clinton’s boring brand of competence.
Trump’s whole campaign is premised implicitly on the idea that the country has been heading in the wrong direction. It is one of the few themes of his campaign that has near supermajority support. So Trump must implicitly connect Clinton’s “experience” to the rottenness of the status quo.
Aren’t you tired of this kind of “experience”?
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