{"id":9445,"date":"2016-09-08T12:03:41","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T19:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9445"},"modified":"2016-09-08T12:03:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T19:03:41","slug":"trump-up-hillary-down-obama-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-up-hillary-down-obama-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Up, Hillary Down, Obama Out"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Without traditional battle lines to fight over, Hillary Clinton is lying low while a frenetic Donald Trump talks nonstop. <\/span><\/p>\n

By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/em><\/div>\n
\n

I<\/span>n most presidential elections, the two candidates spar over issues. The president campaigns for his party\u2019s nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy.<\/p>\n

Democrats champion liberalism, Republicans conservatism. In numerous press conferences, journalists try to force newsworthy and embarrassing admissions from the two candidates.<\/p>\n

Not this year.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama, who less than two years ago dipped to 40 percent in approval rating, is nowhere to be seen. He seems to know that the more he is absent and quiet, the more the public likes the idea rather than the reality of him as president \u2014 and his approval rating has risen to 51 percent.<\/p>\n

In his self-imposed retreat, Obama makes no effort to defend the Affordable Care Act, which is all but disintegrating, as major insurers pull out and costs skyrocket.<\/p>\n

Ditto the Iran deal. Obama is learning that it is better to be quiet about Iranian violations, ransom for hostages, and provocations than to explain them away.<\/p>\n

Obama months ago gave up mentioning how the crushing national debt has almost doubled to nearly $20 trillion under his watch. No one seems to be defending the Obama administration\u2019s lax immigration and border-enforcement policies.<\/p>\n

He is also silent on his foreign policy \u2014 \u201creset\u201d with Russia, the abrupt pullout from Iraq, the intervention in Libya, the growth of the Islamic State, the disintegration of Syria, and the decision not to associate global terrorism with radical Islamism.<\/p>\n

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has kept a relatively low profile for someone who\u2019s running for president. She has not held a press conference in more than nine months, counting on a compliant press to keep giving her a pass on her e-mail scandals.<\/p>\n

Her campaign strategy is to agree to occasional one-on-one interviews with pre-selected friendly journalists, and to engage in chitchat on frivolous morning and late-evening TV talk shows. Clinton avoids large rallies, where she often grates rather than enthuses.<\/p>\n

The Clinton strategy is to sit on her small lead in the last two months of the race, expecting that the mercurial Donald J. Trump will finally destroy his campaign with another outburst. She apparently assumes that nonstop fundraising, attack ads, and an army of staffers will bury the amateurish Trump campaign.<\/p>\n

Clinton doesn\u2019t talk much about the Obama record. Voters do not have any idea how \u2014 or indeed if \u2014 she would fix Obamacare.<\/p>\n

Clinton talks tough about her future foreign policy. Does that mean she thinks Obama has been too complacent abroad?<\/p>\n

Would she add to or reduce Obama\u2019s massive addition to the national debt?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the frenetic 70-year-old Trump cannot sit still. He talks to the press nonstop, anywhere, anytime.<\/p>\n

He flies to Louisiana to inspect flood damage, to Mexico to joust with the Mexican government over illegal immigration, to a black church in Detroit to woo inner-city voters. Trump likes huge crowds at rallies where he bellows and at any moment can veer off script.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s effort is mostly a loud, public, solo affair. He tries to scrounge free TV and radio exposure. He is at war not just with Clinton but also with the Republican establishment and the so-called elites of both parties.<\/p>\n

This weird election is coming down to just two factors:<\/p>\n

One, the outcome on November 8 is largely up to Trump.<\/p>\n

Can he continue to widen his appeal and chip away at Clinton\u2019s lead? In other words, can a hyperactive Trump reinvent himself as \u201cpresidential\u201d and assure voters who do not like Clinton that as a calm president he won\u2019t embarrass the country?<\/p>\n

Two, will Clinton\u2019s scandals, which now have a life of their own, ever cease?<\/p>\n

Seemingly every day we receive new confirmation from Clinton\u2019s communications that she did not tell the truth about either the troubling overlap between the Clinton Foundation and her tenure as secretary of state or how she put national security in jeopardy by using an unsecured private e-mail server in violation of government policy.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for her, there are still thousands of communications to be released under court order \u2014 and two months to air them all. Embarrassing communications will keep surfacing to both contradict her prior statements and reveal more past improprieties.<\/p>\n

Looming in the background is the fear that foreign hackers may have stolen her huge trove of private correspondence before she deleted it \u2014 and are waiting to release even more of it in late October.<\/p>\n

In sum, a passive Clinton hopes that scandals now beyond her control will not evaporate her once-sizable lead before November 8, a date that suddenly seems to Clinton to be too far away.<\/p>\n

A lame-duck Obama runs out the clock, too, neither defending his old policies nor offering new ones.<\/p>\n

All the while, a madcap Trump makes nonstop news, hoping that his self-generated publicity is more helpful than harmful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Without traditional battle lines to fight over, Hillary Clinton is lying low while a frenetic Donald Trump talks nonstop. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online In most presidential elections, the two candidates spar over issues. The president campaigns for his party\u2019s nominee in hopes of continuing his legacy. Democrats champion liberalism, Republicans conservatism. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1092,1091,1090,145,11,187,46,185],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2sl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9366,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-long-trump-summer\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":0},"title":"A Long Trump Summer","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When have voters faced a choice between two such unpalatable, unprincipled candidates? By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Before summer is over, we may see things now scarcely imagined that will make Brexit seem anticlimactic. Trump\u2019s Attack Mode I think the following is an accurate statement: No major\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UK"","block_context":{"text":"UK","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9350,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/election-2016-knowns-and-unknowns\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":1},"title":"Election 2016: Knowns and Unknowns","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"We still have five more months of Trump vs. Hillary. Then four or eight years of \u2014 what? By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The Disaffected. Will stay-home so-called establishment Republicans outnumber renewed Reagan Democrats, Tea Partiers, and conservative independents, some of whom likely sat out 2008 and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-progressive-boomerang\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":2},"title":"The Progressive Boomerang","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 Not only have progressives failed to take down the president, but they also haven\u2019t offered an alternative agenda. \u00a0 The progressive strategy of investigating President Donald Trump nonstop for Russian collusion or obstruction of justice or witness tampering so far has produced no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comey"","block_context":{"text":"Comey","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/comey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8592,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hillary-clinton-reactionary\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":3},"title":"Hillary Clinton, Reactionary","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media\u00a0 Amid the Trump psychodramas, the public has forgotten not just Hillary Clinton\u2019s latest contortions over her emails, but Mrs. Clinton herself. Hillary has assumed the position of a tired vice president in waiting, without any of the perks that might accrue from a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hillary Clinton"","block_context":{"text":"Hillary Clinton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/public-figures\/hillary-clinton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/pic_giant_033015_SM_Hillary-Clinton-Dark-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/politics-not-personalities-will-likely-determine-the-presidential-election\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":4},"title":"Politics, Not Personalities, Will Likely Determine the Presidential Election","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The candidates may be unconventional, but their political agendas fall along a conventional divide. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online At first glance, 2016 sizes up as no other election year in American history. For more than 30 years, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been high-profile\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9126,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/log-cabin-candidates\/","url_meta":{"origin":9445,"position":5},"title":"Log Cabin Candidates","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services Which presidential candidate was born the poorest? Whose log cabin birthplace was the most ramshackle? Hillary and Bill Clinton are worth well over $100 million, largely due to years of leveraging their government service to pull in astronomical speaking and consulting fees\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2016"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ChalkBoardLogCabinPres.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9446,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9445\/revisions\/9446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}