We need more presidential debates
Let’s have more debates. Tuesday’s encounter was excruciating but necessary to witness. True to history, another incumbent president stumbles in the first debate of the fall campaign. They spend four years surrounded by courtiers who lather on the ceaseless flattery. Ninety minutes with no fans intervening disorients them.
Republican Donald Trump, as is his custom, reminded the world that he remains incapable of observing simple rules and acknowledging truth. The rules of the debate were not complicated. Both campaigns agreed to them far in advance of Tuesday’s encounter.
Both candidates were expected to have trouble with the rule that allowed an initial two minutes to respond to a question. Trump rarely knows enough substance about a topic to fill two minutes without veering off into his foul well of abuse. Democrat Joe Biden, with a long reputation for rambling, would have struggled to offer concise answers in two minutes.
Sustained fury born of endless grievances is not an effective debate strategy. It’s uncomfortable for viewers to watch, and in a presidential debate, it diminishes the nation in the eyes of the world. Displaying that much malice before the world will make a man appear unhinged — as it did on Tuesday night.
Since Trump entered the
White House, we’ve heard a steady stream of stories about how serious people endured the agony of trying to brief Trump on national security issues as the president meandered through his monologues. Trump’s debate performance gave us a look at what his late-night telephone calls to reliable boot-lickers must be like when the evening’s news displeases the former head of the sham Trump University.
For months, the former vice president has enjoyed a steady
lead over Trump. It’s varied from time to time, but not by much. Trump is running out of time to find voters who have not made up
their mind. The Biden campaign’s surge in fundraising has put
Trump’s campaign on the back foot as it struggles with mismanaged finances in the closing weeks. Wealthy Republican donors are proving a disappointment in funding independent expenditures.
State polls reveal a deteriorating map for Trump. Every four years we are reminded that no Republican has been elected president without winning Ohio. Trump has trouble there. Biden, flush with cash, is buying millions in television ads. Ohio native LeBron James has recruited thousands of volunteers to help Democrats vote in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. The basketball legend and philanthropist refuses to heed the ugly call of Laura Ingraham, the Fox News personality from Glastonbury, to “shut up and dribble.”
Trump hurled his insults for 90 minutes on Tuesday, and the Biden campaign raised more than $20 million the next day. It could have been a reaction to Trump’s cruel dismissal of Biden’s tribute to his late son Beau’s military service to launch an attack on Hunter Biden. The monstrous refusal of the president of the United States to give a full-throated condemnation of violent white supremacist group Proud Boys. Instead, Trump urged them in front of the nation to “stand back and stand by.” That may have spurred donations to Biden.
In September, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he is defeated in November. He continued the noxious theme Tuesday by undermining the legitimacy of the election in one of his loony monologues. No wonder there are so few undecided voters.
Trump’s campaign spent weeks promoting the notion that Biden is a senile wreck of a man. There was no evidence of that on Tuesday. He’s 77 years old and looks it. He endured Trump’s hectoring, which drew attention from Biden’s answers. Trump needed to shift the focus from himself to Biden. If he had listened to Biden’s responses, Trump might have been able to engage the Democrat on adding members to the Supreme Court, the Green New Deal or his disagreements with running mate Kamala Harris.
We learned little about Biden on Tuesday, but what we did observe was essential. He’s dignified and robust enough and committed to the values of a liberal democracy. He will abide by the result of the election. We are a month from defeating Trump and his accomplices in their long assault on democratic norms and embrace of dictators. Anything short of two more debates would give them a late victory in our common struggle.