In the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, there are two words that come to mind tonight when describing Trump's performance: aggressive and unfocused.
For the first 20 minutes or so, Trump was aggressive and not letting Clinton get away with the typical political mumbo jumbo speak. It worked well. He pressed her on how she's pretty much done nothing for 30 years and that she's all talk, no action.
Truth be told, out of all 17 GOP presidential candidates that Trump defeated, none of them would have aggressively pursued Clinton as much as Trump did. He was in her face and I'm sure his base loved it. It was classic Trump and it seemed to work just fine.
However…
The rest of the debate Trump was put on the defensive. Clinton tried to rattle him on comments about his wealth, race, and his past comments regarding women. The problem for Trump is that he was so busy defending himself that he wasn't able to somehow stop talking about himself.
There was too much of the word, "I" tonight and not enough of "we the people" coming out of his mouth. I think he felt compelled to defend himself and his business dealings. It got him unfocused on the larger issue at hand.
Look, here was the problem for Trump: he never really was able to constantly bring topics back to his unifying theme of, "Make America Great Again." He said the line once at the end of the debate. That was it.
That’s not good. He was too busy defending himself and in the process, got bogged down in that. He lost sight of the bigger picture. I understand that a lot of people love Trump because he's an outsider but there is a big benefit to being a politician. Good politicians are able to tie neat nifty bows at the end of a summation and corral something that is off topic and bring it back to their main theme.
Trump missed doing that tonight. I get it. He's not a politician but tonight he could have used a little of it to get him out of a few jams.
So did Clinton win the debate? Technically, she had a solid night because she seemed in control and presidential. But the good news for Trump is even if Clinton won the debate it may not matter.
Why? Clearly, Trump's strategy is to double down and go aggressively against her, which does a couple things: it gets his base supporters riled up which he will need to show up "big league" if he's to have any shot at winning.
Additionally, by not abandoning the aggressive, law and order, "turn the tables over" outsider in a debate setting, he might just appeal to enough independents who are looking for someone to shake up D.C. in that fashion.
Remember, typically the "change candidate" wins a presidential election and Trump is definitely that candidate. This master plan may actually work.