What this episode covers

This is the second in our series on the 2016 US Presidential election, in which Alex Burd talks to Peter Trubowitz, Professor of International Relations and Director of the US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs. [ The first podcast, on Donald Trump can be found here.] With the Democrat and Republican conventions now complete and the candidates confirmed, attention turns to the general election. Donald Trump, the self-appointed outsider, faces Hilary Clinton, the first female Presidential nominee in the history of the two main parties. Clinton is no stranger to government however, having been the First Lady of the United States, Senator for New York, and Barack Obama’s Secretary of State in a career of public service that spans three decades. The campaign has been vitriolic from the outset with Trump dubbing Clinton ‘crooked’, while Democrats and been quick to argue that Trump is unfit to hold the office. To predict that battle ahead I’ve been speaking Professor Peter Trubowitz, director of the US centre at the London School of economics. He explains why the he expects the upcoming election to be one of the most negative in history. ProfessorTrubowitz: I've written and I think this, that this election is going to be about war, sex, and work. Both of these candidate have very high negatives. Both are up in the 50-60% ratio. It may not be unprecedented, maybe the 1968 campaign with Nixon, Wallace and Humphries was similar. It's very unusual and what it means is that both sides are going to hammer away at those unfavorable. And for Clinton what means is that she's going to go after Trump after on something where he scores very low which is a sense that he's in command on the issues, that he's reliable, and his ratings there are unbelievably low. She's going to focus on who's got the finger on the nuclear button. That may not be as salient as it was in the 1964 election when Lyndon Johnson and when people were worried about Barry Goldwater because he talked very loosely about nuclear weapons and using them and I think she's going to hammer that very hard and she's going to get a lot of traction. What Trump is going to do very hard is go after her husband. He'll be able to do two things there, he'll be able to raise issues about the Clintons and whether they can be trusted and where they've taken the country before, but it's also a way to remind the public that Hilary Clinton is not new and she's part of the establishment. By drawing the connection with the husband and the presidency in the 1990s. Alex Burd: Hilary Clinton has built her campaign on the promise of being a solid, reliable hand on the tiller – in contrast to the erratic and unconventional Trump. With over twenty years experience her time in public life has not been mistake-free and she will not be able to ride the same wave of optimism and hope that carried Barack Obama to power. Her judgement and honesty has been called into question by her opponents following terrorist attacks in Benghazi in 2012 and her use of a private email server when secretary of state. PT: The way this game is played is that you look for the other sides vulnerabilities and you go after your opponent’s strengths. She comes across who's someone who's much more calculating and steady and she'll really try to play on her experience but I think he'll go after that and say experience doesn’t equal judgment and so forth as Bernie Sanders has done in the Primaries. I think both of them have room to go after the other way and to play on the others unfavorable. Her weakness, especially with young people is that she's not viewed as trustworthy. And whether that's fair or not you can see it in the poll results. While Trump as that shortcoming as well, he'll go after her on that dimension. He'll try and driver her negatives higher,

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