After tonight, we may have to add presidential debates to the list of basic American institutions Donald Trump has all but destroyed. People are now asking whether we should have any more, given that this one was such torture to see and hear.
From the first, Trump approached this so-called debate not as an intellectual or even political exercise, but as a schoolyard contest to see who could talk loudest and most: whoever drowns out the other, wins, no matter how senseless the river of words pouring out of his mug. He spent ninety minutes talking almost continuously, using up all of his time and at least half of Biden’s, badgering, interrupting, hectoring, insulting, talking over both his opponent and the moderator, Chris Wallace, to whom he declared early on, with trademark self-pity, “It looks like I have to debate you both, and I’m not surprised.”
Eugene Robinson said it well, later, when he said that Trump came not to debate but to prevent debate. Every child learns early on how much easier it is to prevent clear talk than to produce it: just plug your ears and keep shouting some catchphrase, reducing speech to noise, so that whichever animal grunts loudest and appears most confident, wins. Thus Trump throughout, relentlessly disrupting every attempt by Biden to string two or three words together. Credit him at least with an auctioneer’s eerie fluency; from first to last, his words though senseless were well-formed and rapid as machine gun fire. Ah, so much winning. The “base”, one knew, were just loving it. Hey, lookit me stick a stick into the spokes of this libtard’s bike. Cue the chants and applause.
But Biden, the gentle, aging, never-quite-recovered stutterer, did quite well on the whole. No one could have sustained any kind of connected exposition amid Trump’s word-bombs and incessant interruptions, but Biden managed a little clarity here, a little there. Surprisingly, he made much better use of the camera than the recently retired reality TV host, speaking Straight to America like a voice from the whirlwind, managing several memorable formulations, e.g., “[since Trump took office] We are sicker, poorer, weaker, more divided, and more violent.” The pandemic death toll “is what it is because you are who you are.” At other times, at a certain cost, he gave up and showed that he could play the insult game too: I counted “fool,” “racist,” “clown” twice, “this guy,” "liar," and a general alacrity in making the Sophie’s choice between being steamrolled and adopting the bully’s own tactics. It would have been deeply shocking, coming from Biden, except that Trump was so clearly the aggressor. And that Deference to the Office has become such a quaint, odd notion.
If anyone was rattled by Trump's onslaught, it was Wallace, who repeatedly found himself in the surreal position of having to instruct, implore, beg, or command the second most powerful man on earth (after Putin) to follow rules that every third grader understands, rules that are the foundation of democracy if anything is. Wallace’s distress underscored Trump’s already obvious intent to sabotage the process rather than participate in it.
Afterwards, on several stations I sampled, commentators outdid each other in expressions of disgust, horror, grief, and embarrassment. “A debacle for the President.” “A disaster for democracy.” “The world is laughing at us.” Even on Fox, Trump was generally allowed to be most responsible for the devolution of debate into chimpanzee shrieks. CNN flash polls reported viewers scoring Biden as the winner, 60-38, and as “the stronger leader” by similar percentages.
What can Trump have been thinking? He is simply not as stupid as the man we saw tonight. Better than anyone earth, perhaps, he knows how to win by losing, how to make disaster a springboard to – not triumph, exactly, but further drama with himself at the center. He is no longer trying to win this election. He is trying to discredit democracy itself, so that if the vote is close, and an opportunity offers to seize power by dirty tricks or outright violence, he can be on it like a duck on a June bug.
Do not celebrate, my droogies, till with your own eyes you see him at a crossroads with a stake through his heart.
