For months we’ve been hearing complaints from the pundits that Donald Trump has not given us a clear idea about how he plans to defeat ISIS.
The TV pundits ---- left and right ----are frustrated because Trump won’t say whether he’d use American ground troops.
He won’t even automatically take the use of nukes off the table.
Their complaints remind me of what Ronald Reagan did during the 1980 election against Jimmy Carter.
The pundits did the same thing to my father that they’re doing to Trump. They never stopped asking him during the campaign what he was going to do to solve the Iran hostage crisis.
But he did the right thing. He never said anything.
The liberals spent the whole 1980 campaign saying Ronald Reagan was a war monger and he was going to turn Iran into a glass parking lot with nuclear weapons.
You never saw a speech when he denied any of their most idiotic concerns because he didn’t given one. My father was smarter than the pundits were.
He knew you should never forewarn your adversaries what your plans were.
So he never said anything. He just let the liberals scare the Iranians and the world with all the things he might or might not do as president.
Everyone gives my father credit for the hostages going free on the day he was sworn in, and they should. But one reason they went free was because he kept the Iranians guessing.
They never did know whether he’d nuke them until he didn’t.
I find it interesting this election year that the right and the left keep asking the same questions of Trump. What will he do to defeat ISIS?
But the real story shouldn’t be what Trump might do. It should be what Hillary Clinton won’t do.
To appease her voters and liberal friends in the media, she’s already said she won’t use ground troops. I’m sure the monsters who run ISIS were relieved to hear that.
In the debates on Monday night I hope Trump doesn’t make the mistake of coming up with his plan to take care of ISIS.
I want him to come out with that plan after he becomes president. I want it to be a surprise for MSNBC and ISIS.
I want Trump to tell us nothing. It’s a no-brainer. When you go out to play an NFL game Sunday, you don’t give your game plan to the other team beforehand and then wonder why you keep losing.
The left spends too much time wanting to give the game plan to the other team and then they’re surprised when we lose.
Another thing I don’t want to hear from Trump in the debate on Monday is a whole lot of specific talk about policy.
The 100 million people who are going to watch the most watched debate in world history are going to be looking to see who is the most presidential.
They won’t be looking for the best policy wonk. If Trump starts talking about policy, you’ll hear millions of TVs turning off.
In my father’s first debate with Mondale in 1984 he was absolutely terrible because his advisers filled him with too much policy information.
In the second debate, they didn’t do that. They let Reagan be Reagan. And he won the second debate with ease.
On Monday, Trump needs to show some self-control but most of all he just needs to be Trump. If he does that he should win the debate because Hillary can never stop being Hillary.
Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter