Lord knows how they resisted punching each other
THEY labelled it a ‘town hall debate’ but that was too twee. In truth, it was grippingly lowgrade, the two candidates circling each other on the central stage area. Jackals in a pit.
Here was C-grade gladiatorial entertainment as you’d have found in the dog days of Ancient Rome out in some flea-bitten cornerpost of Empire.
He referred to her as ‘the devil’ and said she should be in prison. She, effectively, said he was mad and unsuited to be head of state owing to his sexist thought crimes.
Slurs about their private finances, fists to the reputational gonads, slanderous imputations aplenty. It may have made for zesty telly, like Saturday afternoon wrestling of old, but it was a grisly showcase for Western politics.
‘Dezizhun 2016’ boomed a portentous voice as NBC TV’s coverage got under way at 2am British time yesterday.
Another time zone, another world politically. The aim of the two politicians here was to drag the other to the sewer floor.
British viewers may have been struck as much by what went unsaid, and by the lack of humour.
‘Manifesto’ was not mentioned once. Nor was the phrase ‘public sector worker’. Education was barely touched upon, public transport
infrastructure was a blank, climatechange came up only briefly. Unlike in a British election debate, no one pulled a sympathetic face to praise ‘ordinary, hard-working people’. The section on tax policy was tiny. Instead: swipe, snipe, gripe. Lord knows how, as they walked feet apart, they resisted punching each other.
Defence and foreign policy were covered, though Mr Trump hesitated to do detail.
He does not strike one as one of life’s bookish Berties. Might strug- gle to pass the 11-plus. Yet he is certainly different – certainly a change from the Washington brahmins. That will help him.
He spoke with an insistent baloney- salesman’s drawl, eyes narrowed to make him look shrewd.
That sexism tape? ‘Locker-room talk,’ he claimed.
No one talks like that in the locker room of the gym I use. We’re normally too exhausted to speak.
A heavy-breather, is Donald. He paused to inhale when, pretty clearly, he was short of a next thought. Then he waved his right hand in the air, as though conducting himself through his arguments. These were the mannerisms of the libertarian taxi- driver who has swallowed too many conspiracy theories.
I once knew a New Yorker who spoke the same way, a Right-wing, gun-rights, flat-tax bar-bore of the most emphatic foolishness. He thought Ronald Reagan a Leftie wimp. And Mrs Clinton? Aiee, what a terrible voice, so bossy and grating, a voice that gets under your fingernails. She, too, betrayed flashes of the leaden bore – technocratic and over-rehearsed when it came to her answers, particularly on healthcare. The smiles were a disaster. When Trump attacked her, she pinged this fake smile, all teeth and chipmunk cheeks.
Speaking to the audience (which did not get much of a look-in), she lifted her chin and spoke down her nose at them. A frightful snoot.
Waddling somewhat, she had arrived with husband Bill in tow. Yes, Bill the groper, Bill of the Daddy longlegs fingers. The expresident swanked around, shaking hands as though he owned the place. Was this electorally wise? The Trump camp had sprung a stunt by inviting some women who claimed to have been pestered by Mr Clinton.
This may not entirely have neutralised Mr Trump’s sex-maniac problem but it went some way. And it stung Hillary. She licked her lips anxiously. A shot of Bill in the margins showed him looking prune-faced.
Did the two bucket-jaw moderators favour Mrs Clinton?
Mr Trump, swivelling at the hips, did not hesitate to question their impartiality. Behind the two candidates was a wall with swirly, historic-style writing – words such as ‘principles’, ‘safety’ and ‘consent’. Noble ideals.
In St Louis, though, we had only dung-heap populism.