It's the Stupid Issues, Stupid!

You can easily say that this has been a difficult week for Donald Trump.

It's not that the Democrats' convention last week was any kind of triumph for Hillary Clinton, but certainly Trump, like all of us an imperfect being, has managed to let his lesser qualities take over.  At a time when we should be hearing the distinction on the issues facing us, from both sides, we are left to concern ourselves with whether or not Trump offended that Muslim immigration lawyer whose son was killed in Iraq twelve years ago.

That was in a war that Hillary voted for and Trump opposed, but in the mind of the father it is more important that his law practice continue to have Muslim immigrant clients pouring over the border.

But I digress.

Donald Trump does a nice speech when he is doing a nice prepared speech.  The off-the-cuff stuff and the tweets have gotten him where he is today, or at least have not prevented him from getting where he is today.  But it is now after the convention, and there is no doubt that the winning strategy for him is to be found in one place.

The issues.

Hillary Clinton cannot possibly run on the issues and win.  If you think she can, at least with a neutral performance by Trump (i.e., absent any more direct shots to his foot), I would heartily disagree.  The issues are not in her favor.

She is, after all, having to navigate the tightrope of presenting herself as a third term of Barack Obama, but with a uterus, yet simultaneously having to sell solutions to problems that Obama clearly left in his wake.  That's not an easy thing to do, considering the fact that:

- ISIS, a purely Obama-caused (by failing to leave troops in Iraq) and Obama-facilitated (by failing to honor his own "red line") phenomenon, has crossed our doorstep and is already killing Americans in America as well as Europeans in Europe.  Obama has no solution, and Hillary has offered only what he is already doing, word for word.

- Obama has been releasing the prisoners at Guantanamo as fast as they can be released, and they are already back to the fight and attacking us.  Hillary has not mentioned any of that.

- Hillary wants to quintuple the number of Syrian refugees coming to America without a word as to how we will pay for them nor, more importantly, why it wouldn't be better to resettle them elsewhere in the region where their culture and language are familiar.

- We are borrowing about a trillion more every year than we, the government, are spending.  Yet Hillary wants to add lots of new programs and more debt (she calls it "investment"; either way, it is the taxpayers on the hook for the principal and interest) and has not once even suggested that we might want to practice fiscal responsibility and try to approach a more balanced budget.

- We have had near-zero economic growth in every year of the Obama presidency.  Zero growth (OK, under 2%) leads to minimal creation of the private-sector, full-time professional jobs that allow people to earn, spend and produce more growth.

- The Obama people have shown to be utterly incompetent in foreign policy, negotiating agreements with countries that hate us (Iran, Cuba) that give us nothing, at the same time letting Russia walk all over us while Obama is ignoring or offending allies like Israel.

- The first black president will leave office with an awful record at race relations, having politicized his Justice Department and jumped in on the wrong side of a number of issues -- Ferguson the worst -- before the facts showed them to have been on the wrong side.  And black Chicagoans and Baltimoreans are dying at record rates at the hands of other black Chicagoans and Baltimoreans, while Obama whistles past the graveyards of these and other Democrat-run cities.

- Hillary has shown, as Secretary of State, before and since, to be the combination of corruption (Clinton Cash-documented favors for pay) and incompetence (dealings with every country on earth have rotted our relations) that become intolerable as (gasp) president.

- And yes, Hillary Clinton is the most God-awful speaker we have heard on the national stage in such a campaign since, well, before they were actually recording these people.  They're having to pay people to listen to her, as was the case in her Pennsylvania bus tour this past week with Tim Kaine.  And at that, they weren't exactly packed crowds.  America can't stand her.

How do I know that these and other issues are losers for Hillary?  Well, the emptyish auditoriums she is speaking in are kind of a hint.  It might be more her abysmal speaking style than disagreement with the issues, but either way, it is an opportunity for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

If he and they choose to take it, that is.

So here is the thing.  "Taking the opportunity" means getting the heck off Twitter, or at least hiring someone to filter his tweets through so we don't get egg-beater added to troubled waters.  I'll be happy to take that job, if he and his campaign are listening.  I don't charge a lot, and I know Trump likes cost-effective solutions.

It means scripting his public appearances, even if he is wont to embellish his script a bit.  I get that, it's who he is.  But much like sugar represents empty calories against one's daily caloric intake budget, those strayings from the script are an empty use of time against the allocation that should be used to hammer where Trump can win -- the issues.

We -- America -- want jobs, and so we need a productive private sector less fettered by Washington, free to provide them.  He can tell us how he will do that.  Regularly.

We -- America -- want the national debt slashed and Washington to live within its means.  Whole, useless parts of government need to be deleted as fast as Hillary's emails.  He can tell us how he will do that.  Every day.

We -- America -- want safety in our homes and protection from Islamist terrorists here and abroad, and from criminals on our streets.  He can tell us how he will do that.  Consistently.

Barack Obama has either caused, exacerbated or ignored these and other problems.  There are entire speeches full of laying out the problems and presenting solutions that are available to Mr. Trump, if only he will listen to those near him telling him that path -- and getting the right writers on his team.

There is an entire campaign to be run, if only he will see it.

And in the end, not only will focusing on the issues make him president, it will make him a better president.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton