Trump subverts debate into street-fighting spectacle

Asking Donald Trump to participate in a presidential debate is like asking a fish to perform a headstand — it is simply outside the realm of possibility. And so it was with Tuesday night’s debate in the US.

There was such contempt, such flagrant abandonment by Trump of the norms and practices that accompany these types of exercises, that it seems not unreasonable to believe he simply has not the first clue of how they’re supposed to work.

In the world of the pugnacious bully, all is surveyed only as an opportunity to shout down, interrupt, heckle, insult and belittle.

That the audience thereby loses any chance for clarification, explanation or understanding doesn’t even enter this calculation.

So degrading and corrupting is Trump’s type of discourse that I was tempted to cheer when Joe Biden said “shut up, man” and called him a clown — as if Biden had managed to land some punches. But that is, of course, to concede that the metric of the debate was one of Trump ’ s choosing: who was the better street fighter, not who offered the more compelling response.

So much of the coverage of the debate I’ve seen focused almost exclusively on the spectacle that is Trump. That is understandable: spectacle suffocated any substance. But such coverage, even outraged coverage, serves only to reinforce the disservice to the American public, who are once again denied any opportunity for real understanding or explanation.

This challenge of how to manage and respond to a person such as Trump, who would overturn our very measurement of what constitutes public good, and eligibility for public leadership, isn’t only one Biden must confront. It is a challenge for all invested in and desiring of a public discourse that facilitates shared values, understanding, communion and compassion.

It is a challenge we in SA face every day too. Take this week’s letter from Jacob Zuma’s lawyers to deputy judge president Raymond Zondo calling for his recusal as chair of the state capture commission. Among the many legal and realworld inanities, there is this allegation: Zondo’s “bias against [Zuma] is a result of personal matters and strained relations that [Zondo] ought to have disclosed right at the beginning of the inquiry”.

This invites the obvious response that Zuma, as president of the republic and so occupying the highest public position and most weighty ethical role in the country — and the person responsible for appointing Zondo to his position as chair of the commission in the first place was arguably even more obligated to take into account and disclose these personal matters and relations, such that they may be, at the time of the appointment.

But this is of no real concern to the former president and his lawyers. Nor, I imagine, would any observation that “the big man” identity and pity-party narrative make for strange bedfellows, disturb them. It is taken straight from the Trump playbook that leadership, consistency, coherence and truth in public statement are for the birds.

For Trump and Zuma, the role and position of leadership is endlessly malleable: to be inhabited to dominate; to be scapegoated to abjure responsibility. That public leadership ought to have both a solidity and weight to it — a sacred obligation and trust owed to those who are governed is entirely foreign.

That would be less of a tragedy were we in our attentions and coverage less likely to make it foreign to ourselves and the public too. But so startled, sometimes starstruck, are we by the spectacle, that we give over our system of measurement and assessment, allowing it to dominate when it should never merit our notice.