Latest Republican debate both revealing, sobering
The Republican debate on CNBC was riveting, the way a train wreck is riveting — you can’t take your eyes off it. The Fox Business Network debate was merely satisfying. A serious political discussion requires a bit more work, but it repays the effort.
The CNBC affair was a contrived food fight during which substance occasionally broke out. FBN, on the other hand, conducted a meaty debate during which a tomato or two was occasionally tossed.
The FBN debate marks the point at which the GOP campaign begins leaving the entertainment phase and entering the serious season. The moderators’ straightforwardness allowed the candidates to reveal themselves, advertently or not.
John Kasich did. Unfortunately, it was an irritable self-righteous Kasich who showed up. At the other end of the podium, Rand Paul had his best night. His noninterventionist foreign policy is far outside the GOP mainstream. But Paul defended his minority view stoutly. Give him points for principle.
Jeb Bush, too, had his best night. He was competent and solid but still inarticulate. You almost feel sorry for the travail he is about to endure on his increasingly long-shot campaign.
Carly Fiorina, strong on stage but weak on campaign infrastructure, showed herself tough as nails — the perfect VP. She can say things about Hillary Clinton that no man can. And she knows it.
Tuesday’s best performers were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Imagine them as a ticket. In 1992, Bill Clinton’s choice of Al Gore was as strategically brilliant as it was counterintuitive. Instead of balancing that ticket, Clinton doubled down with his own mirror image. The “Young Guns,” as Newsweek memorably dubbed them, proved irresistible.
Which leaves the two outsider front-runners. Ben Carson had an awful night. But it was bookended and thereby saved by two good moments: his first answer, the pre-emptive “Thank you for not asking me what I said in the 10th grade,” and his closing statement about the suffering in the country being overcome by America’s inner strength.
Donald Trump shares with Carson the GOP’s vast anti-politics constituency. Carson’s antidote to the nation’s failed politics is moral strength. Trump’s is unapologetic brute strength.
Trump did not have a particularly good night, either. He was again at sea on foreign policy. And when asked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation trade deal he opposes root and branch, Trump did his riff on the Chinese economic menace — to which Rand Paul calmly pointed out that China is not party to the TPP.
Never mind. As long as the anti-politics mood prevails, neither Trump nor Carson is even dented by such policy misadventures.
Tuesday night did not radically alter the trajectory of the Republican race. But it will hasten the winnowing of the field. If you narrow the viewfinder, the debate stage shrinks from eight to six to a possible final four: Cruz, Rubio, Carson, Trump.
On Tuesday, all the contenders were required to show their hand. We saw character and we saw policy. Substance is never sizzling, but the FBN debate was both revealing and sobering: Which one of these can you actually see inhabiting the Oval Office?