With the first presidential debate looming in just 16 days, on this past Wednesday night NBC News hosted somewhat of a sneak preview with a one-hour “Commander-in-Chief Forum” featuring presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This was a forum, not a debate, so the candidates did not appear on stage together. Instead each had a 25-minute segment that included questions from NBC’s Matt Lauer and questions from the audience of military veterans. The event was set in New York on the USS Intrepid, a World War II era aircraft carrier. Third-party Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, despite a poll showing him as the most popular candidate among active duty troops in the military, was not invited to participate.
The event, seen by 14.7 million viewers, was a stunning 60 minutes of television and, to any dispassionate observer, a really bad night for both candidates. Since she appeared first, I’ll start with former Secretary of State Clinton. By going first Clinton was at a disadvantage, for reasons that will become apparent. The session started with Lauer asking her to use the time to talk about the “qualities and your qualifications to be commander-in-chief and not use this as an opportunity to attack Mr. Trump.” Mrs. Clinton agreed.
Anyway, after a softball question about the most important characteristic that a commander-in-chief must possess, Lauer asked her about her judgment regarding the use of a personal email server. Since it’s no secret that Lauer and NBC in general leans left, I expected this to be a “get it out of the way” one-off question but Lauer surprised everyone by asking not one, not two, not three, but four follow-up questions on the topic. Mrs. Clinton was clearly irritated by the questions and never does well when asked about it because she has to spin and deflect and obfuscate. To pile on, the first question from the audience came from a veteran navy flight officer who had a top secret security clearance and said, “If I had communicated this information not following prescribed protocols, I would have been prosecuted and imprisoned.”
After the torturous email discourse (from Hillary’s perspective), she was then asked to defend her vote on the Iraq war, something she also has said was a mistake. For most of the time thereafter, Mrs. Clinton fully displayed that, of the candidates running for president, she has by far the greatest grasp of all of the foreign policy issues facing this country. But towards the end, she made a startling statement:
They are not going to get ground troops. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again. And we’re not putting ground troops into Syria. We’re going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.
— Hillary Clinton (at the Commander-in-Chief forum)
One of the primary criticisms of the Obama administration has been that he telegraphs his foreign policy in a way that is good for domestic politics but not wise for conducting foreign policy. Obama announced timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq and made it obvious to any foreign leader with half a brain that he wanted to sign a nuclear deal with Iran at any cost. For Secretary Clinton to state publicly that she would never put ground troops into Iraq or Syria is stupefying. The right policy is “last resort” but never, ever take something off the table.
Clinton’s campaign complained bitterly that Lauer spent a disproportionate amount of time on the email issue but it was her own fault that she belabored the issue and went into “lawyer” mode. She tries so hard to explain away the issue that she just keeps digging her own grave. What she should have done was say, “as I’ve acknowledged many times, it was a mistake and I wouldn’t do it again.” Period. On the follow-ups, one sentence answers.
Any fair-minded person would acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is vastly more qualified and experienced than either Donald Trump or Gary Johnson with respect to her resume and knowledge about foreign affairs but with experience comes a record and the record has a multitude of flaws. The scope of the flaws of her record are a subject for another time but I’ll say that most of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters didn’t give a hoot about foreign policy experience eight years ago when they voted for Barack Obama over John McCain.
Moving on, billionaire businessman Donald Trump was second on deck. While Clinton appeared annoyed and defensive, Trump was relaxed, engaging and direct. The advantage of going second was that Trump already knew that Mrs. Clinton had ignored Lauer’s request not to attack Mr. Trump by attacking him a couple of times. To a street-fighter like Trump, that was license that he could fire all guns blazing and he did not hesitate to do so on multiple occasions.
If you were scoring this forum strictly on substance, you would have to give the nod to Clinton. But if you were scoring on style, Trump was the clear winner. Still, despite doing better on style points, this forum was an epic “fail” for Trump because of the utter lack of substance. He was lacking on specifics about anything and said a few remarkable things that displayed a fundamental deficiency in understanding about how the military works. When asked about his preposterous statement from months ago that he “knows more about ISIS than the generals,” Lauer pressed him on the topic.
Take a look at the exchange below:
LAUER: Yesterday, you actually told us a little bit about your plan in your speech. You said this. Quote, “We’re going to convene my top generals and they will have 30 days to submit a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.” So is the plan you’ve been hiding this whole time asking someone else for their plan?
TRUMP: No. But when I do come up with a plan that I like and that perhaps agrees with mine, or maybe doesn’t — I may love what the generals come back with. I will convene…
LAUER: But you have your own plan?
TRUMP: I have a plan. But I want to be — I don’t want to — look. I have a very substantial chance of winning. Make America great again. We’re going to make America great again. I have a substantial chance of winning. If I win, I don’t want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is.
LAUER: But you’re going to…
TRUMP: And let me tell you, if I like maybe a combination of my plan and the generals’ plan, or the generals’ plan, if I like their plan, Matt, I’m not going to call you up and say, “Matt, we have a great plan.” This is what Obama does. “We’re going to leave Iraq on a certain day.”
LAUER: But you’re going to convene a panel of generals, and you’ve already said you know more about ISIS than those generals do.
TRUMP: Well, they’ll probably be different generals, to be honest with you. I mean, I’m looking at the generals, today, you probably saw, I have a piece of paper here, I could show it, 88 generals and admirals endorsed me today.
A couple of things to unpack here. First, I do agree with Trump’s position that a U.S. President needs to be unpredictable but he uses that as a dodge, a way to hide that he really doesn’t have a plan at all. That was perhaps unintentionally revealed when he announced that he would ask his top generals to submit an ISIS plan within 30 days, as Lauer pointed out.
In the Lauer-Trump exchange above, I put the last paragraph in boldface because it is truly astounding. Different generals? I’m not sure whether Mr. Trump realizes that the 88 generals and admirals who have endorsed him are all retired, otherwise they wouldn’t insert themselves into a presidential campaign. So with the 88 unavailable, Trump would have to replace the current generals with other current military personnel. A president can’t sack dozens of generals and replace them without cause. That’s something that would subject a President Trump to impeachment.
During the forum, Trump also repeated his familiar refrain that the U.S. should haven “taken the oil” from Iraq, using the appalling justification that it “used to be to the victor belong the spoils.” In the history of mankind that has been the truth but what made America “great” and the world’s only superpower is that our country doesn’t do that. This is why Germany and Japan became our allies, not our conquered subjects, after World War II.
What’s been extraordinary about the real estate mogul’s odyssey to within the doorstep of the presidency is how few specifics he’s provided about his policies, both foreign and domestic. After a disastrous few weeks in early August, the continual news drip about Clinton’s email and Foundation scandals have served to tighten the polls. Trump is still behind and has an electoral college disadvantage but he’s close enough that the Clinton campaign has to be really nervous.
Trump’s best chance to re-set the race is in the first debate on Monday, September 26th. Wednesday’s “Commander in Chief” forum is potentially a foreshadowing of how the Donald could overtake Hillary in the polls after that first debate. She will obviously outpoint him on details but he, the master showman, might zing her enough times that the average viewer feels like he as an outsider is a viable option over a dishonest and untrustworthy insider.
Trump’s biggest challenge (that he has heretofore overcome) throughout the campaign is that tens of millions of Americans just can’t imagine Donald Trump, the reality TV star and controversial celebrity, actually serving as president. Count me as one of them. But just by being on a presidential debate stage with a former Senator and Secretary of State confers a level of plausibility. If Trump manages to bob and weave and score a victory on style, he could instantly emerge as the front-runner.
The first televised presidential debate ever (in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy) is instructive. Historians will tell you that Nixon, the two-term VP under President Eisenhower, outpointed the younger Senator in that debate. However, JFK wound up winning the election. People old enough to remember will tell you that people who watched the debate scored a victory for JFK because of style and demeanor (Nixon was famously sweating). People who listened to the debate on radio felt that Nixon had won the debate because he was more substantive.
It is entirely plausible that Trump, the master TV performer, will be considered the winner of the first debate even if he is devoid of substance and Clinton shows that she knows everything about everything. Most Americans vote on emotion, not logic. If some the 75 million or so viewers who will tune in like Trump’s style, if they’re tired of business in Washington as usual and if they’re already unsatisfied with Hillary as a nominee, they may join his cause and there may be a big shift in the polls.
Bottom line: Hillary needs to figuratively disembowel Trump during the first debate. She needs to successfully portray him as fundamentally unfit for the presidency, to bait him into his worst bombastic tendencies, and to do it in a way reduces him to rubble (to coin a phrase he used about the generals on Wednesday). If the NBC forum this week is any indicator, that is hardly a guaranteed outcome.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig
Very few people are going to vote for Trump because they feel he has more knowledge or experience on the world stage than HRC. This has always been about a more centered worldview, common sense and who are you going to surround yourself with. The country already knows what HRC would do(lie constantly) vs the hope DT will listen to the abundance of talent that surrounds him. If so, he would clearly be the superior choice and in the end pull 90% of republicans with him. Registered republicans who stay home,waste their vote on someone with no chance or vote for the Dems will deserve 4 more years of BS.