The Debate was Brutal

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Oct 2016

Last night’s debate began ugly and finished ugly.  Everything in between was ugly.  From the first question the moderators of the debate, Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News, steered it into the gutter and did their best to keep it there all night.  The overall sense of the debate was one of despondency.

Hours before the debate, The Factor’s Bill O’Reilly was on Fox News Sunday being interviewed by Chris Wallace as part of the promotional tour of O’Reilly’s new book. ‘Killing the Rising Sun.’ O’Reilly has known Donald Trump for nearly thirty years, and Wallace asked O’Reilly about the media bias in covering the Trump campaign.  O’Reilly observed,

“The prevailing wisdom in Washington, as you know, and in New York City, is that we journalists know better than everybody.  We know better than everybody.  All right?  We're smarter, all right, than the president, the senators, the mayors, particularly a barbarian like Trump.  

That's really -- the fangs are really out because they don't think -- they being journalists -- that Trump is worthy enough to even run.  He's not worthy.  So, that's what you're seeing.  And that's absolute bias.”

The sense of Trump’s lack of worthiness was the tone of the questioning throughout the debate.  And it so happens that Trump’s unfitness to be president is the theme of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, whose otherwise vapid campaign slogan is “Stronger Together.”  Yes, she of the ‘basket of deplorables’ remark is running on the slogan ‘Stronger Together.’  She is probably referring to all progressives on the left rather than all Americans in one country.

The debate opened with an infantile question from the audience, asking what sort of example each was setting for the nation’s children.  What are two septuagenarians going to offer as advice?  Children of what age?  And examples in regards to what?  The question was a stupid one to ask, but it set the stage for the interrogation of Trump on the eleven year old hot-mic locker-room talk.  Trump’s response was actually a good one, referring to the brutalities of ISIS, the Middle East was burning down and other problems facing America and the world - and this was uppermost in their minds?  Eleven year old locker-room talk?

Hillary had her chance to repeat the mantra that she thought Trump was unfit, unlike other Republican nominees.  This latter comment was a Clinton lie, because in detail Hillary has never thought anyone who opposed her or Bill were fit for office.  But she made her comment about Trump seem reasonable by offering the contrast.

In retaliation, Trump pulled out his prepared remarks about the women Bill Clinton raped or sexually molested, and about the 12 year-old-girl who was raped by the man Hillary defended in court, and then laughed afterwards about the sneaky trick she pulled to get him off.  Ugly.  It was Trump’s words against Clinton deeds.

In reply to that, Hillary quoted some bromide uttered by her ‘friend’ Michelle Obama about if the opponent takes the low road, she’ll take the high road.  Trump retorted with the brutal ads run by Obama’s and Hillary’s 2008 campaign, some of which showed Obama as a mature man in Kenyan garb.  Trump then followed with a reference to poor Bernie Sanders who never had a chance against a rigged system.

Finally, Trump turned to what his followers waited in vain for in the first debate, Hillary’s emails.  Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the email debacle.

Hillary here and later in the debate tried to call Trump a liar.  But Hillary’s calling someone else a liar doesn’t seem to work.

The first half hour of the debate was simply brutal.  The debate was finally lifted out of the gutter when Trump started talking about issues, but the air of the first half hour carried over into the remaining hour.

It was in the latter half of the debate that, most pundit agree, Trump ran away with the debate.  Once it got to substantive issues, Trump won and scored point after point on Hillary.  Hillary offers nothing but more of the same.  The problem is that having been in public life for thirty years, none of her “solutions” have worked after being tried, and new ideas were met with, well why haven’t you done this before?  Trump offered a fresh direction, and sounded reasonable in doing so.

A significant question occurred near the end of the debate, concerning Supreme Court appointments.  It is underappreciated at the moment, but Hillary’s reply concerned all the court decisions she wanted overturned and others upheld.  She wanted Citizens United and Heller overturned, while Roe v. Wade and “marriage equality” upheld.  She wanted people with life experience on the bench.  Significantly, she never once referenced an adhesion to the constitution as a guiding principle of the people she would appoint.  Her appointments were all about winning this or that progressive cause by stacking the Court with politically minded nominees.  Trump, in his reply, got around to mentioning the constitution, and said that people like Justice Antonin Scalia were people he would appoint, and mentioned his list of twenty names.  Trump did mention the security of the 2^nd Amendment in selecting Justices.

Hillary revealed herself, though it will take time to notice.  Hillary’s response to Trump’s list was that the members of the list were, for one reason or another, unfit, deplorable, and irredeemable as Justices for the Supreme Court.  The same extreme hatred for people who oppose her aims was present in her criticism of Trump’s list.  Trump was right when he said that Hillary had hatred in her heart, and it showed in this instance.

The final question was another infantile one, asking what praiseworthy feature you saw in the other candidate.  Hillary replied that Trump had a nice family.  Trump was more gracious, saying that Hillary was a fighter who never gave up, and he thought that was a good trait.

The punditry immediately after the debate held that Trump won the debate, in spite of the efforts on the part of the moderators, particularly Martha Raddatz, to argue with Trump to Hillary’s advantage.  Three against one.  But I wonder about the vicious, evil, unnecessary and ugly tone set at the beginning by the moderators.  Being in the mud is where Hillary is at her best, and it took Trump nearly a third of the debate to get it out of the gutter and onto substantive matters.  Trump may have won the debate, but the use of the victory is in doubt - unless the polls react favorably to Trump.  The debate was so unnecessarily ugly that a Trump win may not help him.  People, I fear, may have been so turned off that a win doesn’t add momentum to his campaign.  Time will tell.

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