Stock up on popcorn by @BloggersRUs

Stock up on popcorn
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by cyclonebill (Popcorn) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

As the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates prepare for their debates, they are bringing in expert advice, the New York Times reports:

Hillary Clinton’s advisers are talking to Donald J. Trump’s ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” seeking insights about Mr. Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to needle and undermine him in four weeks at the first presidential debate, the most anticipated in a generation.

Her team is also getting advice from psychology experts to help create a personality profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate stage.

With Trump’s lack of impulse control, even knowing what’s coming won’t help him. Besides, this guy doesn’t prepare for anything except a strong breeze.

He has been especially resistant to his advisers’ suggestions that he take part in mock debates with a Clinton stand-in. At their first session devoted to the debate, on Aug. 21 at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J., the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was on hand to offer counsel and, if Mr. Trump was game, to play Mrs. Clinton, said Trump advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate preparations were supposed to be kept private. He declined.

Questioning Trump’s net worth and intelligence and business prowess are possible lines of attack. Ghostwiter Tony Schwartz told the Times Trump will bring “nothing but bluster” to the debates, and nothing of substance:

“Even so,” Mr. Schwartz said, “Clinton has to be careful — she could get everything right and still potentially lose the debates if she comes off as too condescending, too much of a know-it-all.”

That’s what did in Al Gore in his first debate with George W. Bush in 2000. For the Clinton campaign, those who fail to learn the lessons of history, and so forth.