Goodykoontz:

If Trump gives a speech without chants of “Lock her up,” does it count?

We saw a different side of Donald Trump Monday night, as he addressed the nation during a prime time speech outlining a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

Will we see the same tone tonight in Phoenix?

Trump spoke in measured tones, never yelling, and never making angry, personal attacks.

Not once did the words “Hillary Clinton” escape his lips (though Barack Obama’s legacy in Afghanistan was much discussed).

In fact, Trump spent the first part of his speech saying that to support the troops, we must heal divisions at home. How he reconciles this with his Twitter feed, he didn’t say.

I’ll leave the policy decisions to greater minds, but frankly, seeing Trump like this makes me a little uneasy. And that may not be fair to him. I realized about halfway through that I watch Trump on television and on social media in the same way many people watch NASCAR races — waiting for the wrecks.

Monday night, he mostly kept the Trumpisms under wraps. It’s true that he couldn’t get through the speech without, while talking about solving problems, saying, “I’m a problem solver.” And he called terrorist losers, but that seems a fair description.

Yet, I think it’s somewhat uncomfortable to watch him in this context. He was so constrained. It seemed as if he wanted to burst out of this traditional role and get back to being the perpetual candidate.

If Trump gives a speech without the audience chanting, “Lock her up!” does it even count? Of course it does. He is the President of the United States, something that gets lost in the blizzard of attack tweets that bursts forth from the White House — or whatever golf course he’s visiting — nearly every day, and the reaction to them. He was making an important policy speech in prime time, a real rarity for him. Typically we would watch something like this concerned only about what he had to say, not how he said it — or who he attacked while saying it.

Trump has changed that, and there’s no going back. No one can watch him speak, in any context, without waiting for him to drop a controversial bombshell. Monday night, at least on the delivery front, that didn’t happen. (A cursory channel-surfing of cable-news networks found no one, not even Fox News, saying, “This was the night he became president”, which was a nice show of restraint. But everyone mentioned the muted tone.)

With all the turmoil of the first few months of his presidency, is it possible that he’s cleaned enough house that more-reasonable minds are now helping guide the ship of state?

Tonight in Phoenix will offer a big clue. Will he continue to stress the importance of healing all that divides us at home, so that we might be more successful abroad? Or will he revert to name calling and bragging about his supposed accomplishments?

Tune in tonight to find out.