Trump Laid Out His Game Plan 30 Years Ago

Ben Jenkins: “Donald Trump’s six-month stay atop the Republican presidential field has confounded political pros. Rather than follow the playbook that has long guided campaigns through the arduous primary calendar, the bombastic billionaire is charting his own path, filled with insults and vainglorious preening that theoretically shouldn’t attract voters. But Mr. Trump laid out how he would run his campaign 30 years ago in his best seller The Art of the Deal. Perhaps if more strategists had read the book, this race would be tighter.”

A few choice quotes from the book:

• “A little hyperbole never hurts.”
• “Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition.”
• “Controversy, in short, sells.”
• “Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all.”