There’s a scene in the Bill Clinton-era film “Office Space” where Tom Symkowski explains to the human resources department what he does for the company.
“I have people skills!” he exclaims. “I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
When the discussion in the first presidential debate turned to temperament, Donald Trump channeled his inner Tom Symkowski.
“I think my strongest asset maybe by far is my temperament,” Trump said, his voice rising. “I have a winning temperament.”
Can’t you understand that? I have a good temperament! What the hell is wrong with you people?
Trump has had some success in the past muddying the waters by turning Hillary Clinton’s best attack lines against her.
Clinton says you are a racist, call her a bigot. Clinton says you have no plans, accuse her of running a policy-free campaign. Clinton claims you don’t respect all Americans, mention she wants to put a high percentage of voters in a basket full of deplorables.
This strategy has its limits, however. It is probably a little late to try the temperament line against Clinton, even with her genuinely cringe-inducing video shouting remarks to a labor group. A Fox News poll earlier this month found that 59 percent thought Clinton had the temperament to be president compared to only 38 percent who said the same about Trump.
Much will be made of Trump’s missed opportunities, which were numerous. Trump had deflected Clinton’s attacks on his tax returns by counterpunching on her emails, only to bizarrely start talking about his taxes again. Trump then failed to make the obvious point about Clinton’s private server when asked about cybersecurity and didn’t mention immigration when asked about homegrown terrorism.
A debate in which Trump mentions Rosie O’Donnell more times than building a wall (1 to 0, for those of you keeping score at home) is defined by missed opportunities.
But the biggest problem was Trump kept getting distracted by the shiny objects Clinton dangled in front of him. He initially had her on the defensive but soon enough she got under his skin and he began to respond to every criticism, no matter how far off his message it took him.
That’s a big reason why Trump talked about Russia in his cybersecurity answer rather than Clinton’s emails. It’s why he started shouting about his temperament. It’s why he got drawn into all sorts of petty squabbles that made him dwell on his own negatives rather than reinforce hers.
The low point may have been when he tried to argue that getting Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate was proof he could get things done.
On the birther front, however, Trump really has no good argument to make aside from pointing out that the Clintonites’ hands aren’t entirely clean when it comes to spreading ugly rumors about Obama and then trying to assert some kind of equivalence between their whispering campaigns and his shouting birtherism from the rooftops. On some of these other points Trump does have good arguments to make.
When it comes to Trump’s taxes, the shadier aspects of his finances, his hiring of foreign workers (which mercifully didn’t come up Monday night), his refusal to fully pay some of the people who have done work for him, he can turn these things to his advantage.
Trump will never be able to fully defuse these ticking time bombs, even against “likeable enough” Hillary. What he can do is more consistently press the case that his ruthlessness can be made to work for the American people, not just for himself.
It’s something Trump hinted at many times, saying the country needs his kind of thinking and money-making prowess. But he seldom brings it home. Trump could say that the skills he’s used to enrich himself can be used to bring prosperity to the voters. And he can say that because he has benefited from the loopholes in our “rigged system,” he is the one who best knows how to close them.
Are some Trump products made overseas? That’s only because our laws, regulations and trade policies incentivize that while making it more difficult to make money in the good old USA. Who better to chop down this jungle of bad laws than someone who has had to try to navigate them himself?
Such arguments would be self-serving, to be sure. But they are also more believable than re-litigating the particulars of obscure business disputes that few people care about or shouting about having a great temperament.
“Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” FDR reputedly said of the Nicaraguan dictator. To win, Trump needs a critical mass of struggling Americans to reach the same verdict about him.
