By Marc Jampole
The news media would like to cast the upcoming presidential
debates as an Armageddon-like battle for the votes—and souls—of Americans, but
objectively speaking, it will likely resemble a prize fight between Mohammad
Ali at his peak and an out-of-shape, middle-aged couch potato who took one
boxing lesson decades ago.
In this corner, we have an articulate, well-educated woman
who has more experience in public service than anyone else ever to have run for
the White House. She has well-defined, carefully detailed positions on every
issue. She has proven to be an exceptionally competent debater in the past. She
doesn’t get riled and thinks well on her feet. She has been subject to, and
withstood with grace, more investigations than perhaps any other public figure
in American history and yet has never been charged with a crime, censured by a
Congressional committee or accused of a specific act of malfeasance—unless you
think there’s something illegal about occasionally making the same mistake that
your predecessors or peers made. Every time I have seen her, her demeanor has
been friendly, concerned, caring, knowledgeable and open, but keep in mind that
I am judging only on my experience of seeing on TV a large number of her
speeches and other public interactions, without the filter of the carefully
concealed sexism of mainstream and rightwing media pundits. Fact-checker after
fact-checker has proclaimed her the most honest of all the 20+ candidates to
declare for the presidency during this election cycle. She defines steadiness.
In the other corner, we have an ignorant blowhard who allows
his pathological narcissism to emerge in insults, illogical statements, empty
boasts and odious lies. His positions on most subjects are sketchy or built on
one or two “big ideas” which turn out to be bad ideas, like building a wall
between the United States and Mexico or creating a new child care benefit that
primarily helps high-income families. His business record is deplorable, marred
by four major bankruptcies, more than 3,500 lawsuits, many for nonpayment,
documented racist business practices and evidence of legal and ethical lapses
by both his businesses and his foundation. His debating style is to insult
opponents and bait them in petty side-show arguments. Every fact-checker agrees
that he is not only the biggest liar in this presidential election, but in
every election ever fact-checked. He is the epitome of the erratic.
News reports suggest that the Donald has too little
discipline to prepare for anything, while Hillary is putting a lot of time into
shaping her answers to potential questions, analyzing potential traps,
developing friendly and tasteful ways to goad the eminently goadable
Trumpty-Dumpty and practicing zingers. I’m confident that there will be at
least one “You’re no Jack Kennedy” moment because Hillary is going to have at
least a dozen of clever comebacks lined up and she’ll know if and when to fire.
I expect that at some point Hillary will say some version of, “You can insult
me and my family all you want, but don’t insult the American people/working
class Americans/African Americans/President Obama/the brave men and women who
serve this country overseas.” I’m also reasonably sure that towards the end of
the debate, the Donald will start to drag, out of a combination of exhaustion
and boredom. He may even walk off the stage in a pretend of real pique.
By all objective criteria, I predict Hillary will slay
Trumpty-Dumpty, posterize him like LeBron James slam-dunking against Danny
DeVito. She will out-fact him, out-argue him, out-issue him and out-zing him,
all the while smiling and staying in control.
The moderators and the rest of the news media will face
three moments of truth. The first for the moderators will involve the
development of their list of questions. Will they ask Clinton about her emails
and will they ask Trump about his bankruptcies, many lawsuits, the case against
Trump University, evidence of bribery against the Trump Foundation and his
connections to the alt-right? I really have no answer to this one, but I hope
the moderators and media do not decide to dredge Clinton’s non-scandals or to
try to equate them with the many real scandals in Trump’s career.
At this point, asking about Trump’s “birtherism” seems to be
unavoidable, and here the moderators, and later the news media, face the second
moment of truth: When Trumpty-Dumpty once more gives his biggest lie to
date—that Hillary started the “birther” rumor and he was the only one with the puissance
and genius to put it to rest—how will the moderator handle it? Will she/he tell
Trump to his face that he is lying? Will she/he say the “L” word or substitute
some wishy-washy euphemism, like “stretching the truth” or “doesn’t correspond
to the factual evidence”? Will she/he pull a Chuck Todd (always a bad thing),
which in this case means letting the Hillary part of the lie stand and only
correcting the part about Trump being the one to “finish off” birtherism?
And how will the media evaluate what the moderators do? They
could applaud or condemn any of the possible ways the moderators decide to
respond to what we know will be Trump’s pure and unadulterated, bold-faced,
out-and-out, pants-on-fire lie about birtherism.
The third moment of truth will come after the debate is
over. Will the news media admit that Hillary won the debate? Or will they grade
her down because of non-existent style issues, or I should say, issues of style
that would not be issues if she were male.
The media have often focused on style over substance in
evaluating debates. I remember watching the 1980 elections as a television news
writer and field producer with NBC’s West Coast political commentator of the
time and thinking Jimmy Carter kicked Ronald Reagan’s butt; my commentator friend
and everyone else in the mainstream news media said that Reagan won on style.
Same thing in 2000, when the news media analyzed the candidates’ style so as to
avoid the fact that the Republican was a know-nothing. I don’t think the media
will be able to say that Trumpty-Dumpty won, but they could continue to promulgate
all their false myths about Clinton’s lack of connection with people and
untrustworthy demeanor. Say it enough times and people believe it—especially
the people who don’t actually watch the debates.
Now I’m going to go out on a limb. I have no idea whether
Trump will show up at the second debate, but I predict that he will make some
excuse and duck a third KO by Hillary. I hope that any debate
that Trump skips goes on without him, so that Hillary has three solid hours to
explain exactly how the most progressive agenda by any political party in
American history will help 99.5% of all Americans and show the American people
that she deserves our votes on merit, and not as the lesser of two evils.
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