"HILLARY CLINTON IS VERY DISHONEST", TRUMP BLASTS

UPDATED: 11:09 AM EDT 09.08.16
There's one thing largely missing from the 2016
race: a debate about what Donald Trump or
Hillary Clinton would actually do as president.
The final stretch of the campaign is opening this
week with a torrent of insults and name calling
that make clear the election will be more about
the candidates and their personalities than their
policy prescriptions for the nation's ills.
The rhetorical warfare was on display
Wednesday when Trump dismissed Clinton's
foreign policy record by accusing her of being
"trigger happy and very unstable." Jennifer
Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, shot
back at Trump in a statement that likened him to
a "schoolyard bully who can't rely on facts or
issues."
Presidential campaigns are always rough and
tumble affairs but the 2016 race is emerging as
a particularly personal -- and nasty -- race.
Candidates in previous cycles traded plenty of
tough barbs but also sparred over policy
surrounding health care, financial regulation and
taxes. But in a year in which both candidates are
deeply unpopular, strategists say their only
choice is to make the election a referendum on
the other person.
"Hillary with her serial dishonesty and corruption
allegations, and Trump, just with everything --
people are still trying to make that determination
about both of them: Are either of these people
qualified to do the job?" said Republican pollster
Dan Judy of North Star Opinion Research. "It's
harder to get to the policy stuff when you're
hung up on that."
Policy success
Presidential hopefuls have found success before
by casting the entire election as a make-or-
break decision on one important issue. Bill
Clinton's middle-class economic appeal defined
the 1992 election, and Barack Obama's vision of
2008 as a fundamental transformation of the
economy helped him defeat John McCain.
In 2016, though, "we're not finding that there are
policy issues that are being framed. What they're
framing is the other candidates," said Richard
Perloff, a political science and communications
professor at Cleveland State University.
"Trump is going to make it about Clinton
because he lives in a world of verbal aggression.
Much of what he's doing is framing it as
'Crooked Hillary,' untrustworthy Hillary -- and
she's doing the same to him," he said. "What
we're seeing is framing of image, framing of
personality."
Jeff Weaver, the campaign manager for Bernie
Sanders, bemoaned the tenor of the Clinton-
Trump race in an interview on CNN's "New Day"
Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, this campaign has devolved into a
who lies more or who is the worst candidate," he
said. "I think we have to get back to a
discussion of who is the better candidate?"
The candidates delved into some national
security policy issues Wednesday night at the
"Commander in Chief" forum hosted by NBC
NEWS. The event exposed the gulf between
Trump and Clinton on issues such as combating
ISIS and managing the military.
Clinton's backers say the candidate herself
craves a policy-focused race -- noting that she
has rolled out detailed proposals on subjects
ranging from national security and ISIS to mental
health.
They say that in attacking Trump, she is simply
playing the hand she was dealt. Many point
fingers at the news media, saying Trump's
personal attacks and outbursts have received
too much attention.
"The fact is that there is so much titillation from
and about Donald Trump that there's very little
bandwidth left for much of a focus on policy,"
said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin of Hart
Research Associates, who works with the pro-
Clinton super PAC Priorities USA. "You are much
more likely to get covered when you call the
other person a name than when you make a
substantive speech about public policy."
The focus on Trump's foibles has at times
helped Clinton. In the weeks after Trump's
assertion that an Indiana-born judge couldn't rule
fairly because of his Mexican heritage and his
fight with the Gold Star Khan family, Trump
tumbled in the polls as Clinton built a double-
digit lead.
But that lead has narrowed amid a steady string
of reports about the Clinton Foundation's ties to
the State Department, and Clinton's use of a
private email server -- all amplified by
Republicans.
Her allies say the campaign about personality,
not policy, might help her defeat Trump -- but at
a long-term cost.
"This has been harmful to Hillary Clinton in that I
am absolutely certain that people would feel
more positively toward her if they were able to
hear more clearly what it is she wants to do to
make their lives better," Garin said.
"But given the tone and tenor of the campaign, it
has been very hard to communicate much of
that," he said, pointing to news media. "And,
look, the reality is that unlike any other election,
at the presidential level, what people hear and
see on the news is at least as important a driver
-- and probably a more important driver -- of their
attitudes than what they see on advertisements."
Not shying away
Of course, Clinton isn't shying away from the
fight. With less than three weeks before the first
presidential debate, she has shown an eagerness
in recent days to attack Trump more directly.
Speaking with reporters aboard her campaign
plane Tuesday, she blasted Trump's refusal to
release his tax returns.
"He clearly has something to hide. We don't
know exactly what it is but we are getting better
guesses about what it probably is," she said.
At a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday night,
Trump -- who in the GOP primary attached
nicknames like "Lyin' Ted" and "Little Marco" to
his opponents -- claimed that Clinton "never"
talks about policy.
"All she does is a total hit job on Donald Trump,"
he said.
He mocked Clinton's interview with the FBI over
her private email server, and said her destruction
of old phones was an effort to cover up "very,
very -- and I mean very -- shady activity."
Trump, though, is particularly difficult to engage
on policy. He's abandoned positions he's taken
in previous years -- asserting now that he's
always opposed military interventions that he's
publicly supported in the past -- and has
reversed himself within days on issues like the
deportation of 11 million undocumented
immigrants living in the United States.
Trump called Wednesday for a major increase in
military funding, but didn't offer any details on
how he'd fund that increase.
"I feel like people are making this more
complicated than it is. It's not that he's
changing positions -- it's that he doesn't have
positions," said Judy, the GOP pollster.
He said Americans consistently assert that they
want to hear more about issues and policy. But
for Clinton and Trump, there's a different
standard.
"Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are two of the
most well-known, well-defined candidates for
president, for better or for worse, we've had
running at the same time for maybe 100 years,"
Judy said. "People know both of these
candidates really well, and have sort of set
opinions on them that don't really fluctuate with
any particular policy or ideology."


Source :cnn
Edited by DANIEL IKECHUKWU EKWUNIFE