Vincent J. Curtis
27 Sept 2016
Last night I watched Donald Trump bury Hillary Clinton at
the debate. It was lopsided how big he
won. Hillary may have scored some points among her committed base and among her partisans, but she barely touched Trump.
One hundred million people tuned in. One hundred million people did not tune in to
see Hillary Clinton’s slab face. One
hundred million people did not tune in to listen to Hillary offer the old tired
bromides, the same platitudes, and the same solutions that have failed the last
thirty years. One hundred million people
tuned in to watch Donald Trump.
The TV audience were watching to decide who ought to be the
next president of the United States.
They weren’t watching to choose the next debating champion. They weren’t watching to see who was the
smarmiest lawyer. They were looking for
the person best suited to lead the United States for the next four years. Trump was clearly a leader, and Hillary
demonstrated no leadership qualities at all on the stage. She was there to win a debate under debating
rules, a rulebook the audience is not especially careful of. Trump was there to show why he should be
president.
Trump dominated the debate.
He interrupted Hillary when useful in good parliamentary style – fast and
incisive, too fast for the moderator to intervene. Trump would not let the moderator, Lester
Holt, push him around. Trump talked
about what he wanted, more or less in response to the question put
to him. He did have an answer, but when it suited him at
that point in the debate, Trump would divert to throw another shovel full on
Hillary. Then he answered the question.
One commentator from the far left of the political spectrum
sent out a message that he was getting uncomfortable watching the debate
because, as performance art, Trump was miles ahead of Hillary. Performance art is how I let the debate
present itself.
Within a minute or two into the debate, I stopped looking at
Hillary. I watched Trump and his
reaction to her. I stopped listening
closely to Hillary because she bored me, and she had nothing new to say. It didn’t take Trump long to seize on it, asking
Hillary if she was just thinking of this now or was this the same boilerplate
that has been tried for thirty years and hasn’t worked. Trump was far more interesting to watch and
to listen to. Meanwhile, Hillary
presented herself like a harridan.
Eventually, Hillary turned to getting under Trump’s
skin. This was supposed to be her great
ability and achievement in the debate: to have gotten under Donald’s skin. How pulling off such a thing makes her
qualified to be president and a welcome presence in the living rooms of America
for the next four years was never explained to me. I did watch Hillary try to strike really low
blows at times, and especially near the end, but I never saw Trump get any more
exercised than his usual level. Trump
never got angry or lost his cool, if that is what Hillary provocations were
attempting to do.
The commentary after the debate was over had the outcome of
the debate pretty close, with a slight advantage to Hillary. I don’t know what debate they were watching,
or what set of rules they had in mind to judge the thing. I watched the debate as a TV spectacle for
its impressions – at its most basic level.
And Trump looked and sounded much better than Hillary, whom I could
neither watch nor listen to after a while.
I’ve seen it all and heard it all before from her. This debate would have been a tiresome to
political wonks if the debate were between John Kasich and Hillary. It was Trump who made it interesting and who
drew the audience.
Trump did not explode.
He belonged on stage and most of the time dominated it. He did not say anything outrageous. He gave sensible answers to the questions put
to him. Compared to Trump, Hillary
looked bad.
Watch the polls over the next few days, and I’m sure Trump
will rise.
Hillary did not cause Donald Trump to prove himself temperamentally
unfit to be president. Instead, Trump
made her look weak and tired, with nothing new to offer. Trump may not have won over many people who
were leaning towards Hillary, but those people are going to stay home rather
than vote for her. Trump continues to
chip away at Hillary’s support among minorities when he made another direct
appeal to the Black and Hispanic vote by observing the hellish conditions in
which they live, devoid of law and order.
He said he wants to do something about it, something Democrats won’t do.
Hillary failed to put Trump away, and Trump came away
looking like an executive, a Chairman of the Board - presidential - and a more powerful leader than Hillary.
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