By Nate Davis
Second term convention speeches are among the most difficult political speeches to nail. Here are the four speech pitfalls facing Pres. Trump as he prepares to give his big speech tonight.
1. Falling into the comfort zone of giving a “red meat” speech to the base...which is already fully onboard and quite satiated from the last three nights of flag waving and conservative barn burner speeches.
2. Spending a lot of time defending his record, especially Corona etc.(No need to defend himself to supporters; he’s more guilty than OJ to his detractors; he will look defensive to undecided voters)
3. Spending a lot of time on the SAME OLD attack lines against the Democrats. That too will not change any bodies minds.
4. Trying to give a high-toned presidential address. That may have worked for Obama, Clinton or Reagan, but by now we all know that one of Trump’s top 100 qualities is not that he is presidential. One tweet about Rosie O’Donnel tomorrow morning would render the whole speech useless.
So what must he do? Here are the four simple things that he can do to knock it out of the park:
1. Be unpredictable. Just like sometimes when fixing something you need to nudge it around a bit, he needs to do that with voters. He needs to change the narrative. He does that through unpredictability. For example, if he called for a bipartisan commission to facilitate more charter schools for black kids and set a goal of 500,000 black kids to go to charter schools in his next 4 years that would be big news. Especially if he says something like, “On this issue we need to put politics aside. I therefore am reaching out my hand and calling on Pres. Obama to commit to working with me on this endeavor should I be re-elected.” What’s Obama going to day tomorrow- that he won’t work with Trump to help the black community if he is re-elected?
2. Explain why China is dangerous and tie Biden to that evil regime. Attacking Biden as being old and in cognitive decline won’t change one vote. But explaining in detail how Biden’s son Hunter got $1.5 billion dollars in investment money from China while Biden was negotiating with them, would be very effective. He should also talk about how China released the Corona virus on the world and whether it was on purpose or by accident, we can’t leave it to Joe to handle them because they own him.
3. Talk about exactly how he plan on bringing the economy back to pre Corona levels. Provide details of bills that he will ask Congress to pass.
4. Talk about Law and Order but not just in platitudes. Explain how sometimes police officers get it wrong and the results could be deadly, therefore we need to train them better and consider non-lethal weapon options. But also talk how outside agitators come into the inner cities, call for defunding of the police and fly out of there while the residents are left with the ensuing havoc. Promise not to let that happen.
Tonight’s speech is a rare opportunity to move the approval needle upwards in an hour or less. We will see in a couple of hours whether Pres. Trump nails it or not.
Categorised in: US News
