At one point, he even interjected to apparently acknowledge that indeed he didn’t pay federal taxes and that that made him “smart”. This seemed to set the stage for exactly the debate many had predicted: Clinton vastly superior on range and detail, but failing to connect Trump shallow and crass, but perhaps sending a clearer and more emotionally engaging signal. It wasn’t coherent by any normal standard, but he did sound a clear anti-trade note consistent with a core campaign theme. Trump, also invited to open on the economy, accused China and Mexico of stealing American jobs. As is her trademark, Clinton came out of the gate like someone carrying several binders of preparation in her head, running gamely thorough a list of proposals – employee profit-sharing schemes, the importance of women’s work, paid family leave, debt-free college attendance, and the need to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share of tax. Things actually started in somewhat subdued fashion. Whether the voters will hold that against her, we shall see – but the gap between the two could not have been more apparent. It was perhaps impossible to avoid a touch of condescension, such was the gulf in knowledge and capability between the candidates. It was a slow burn over the course of the debate’s more than 90 minutes, but by the end she had certainly put Trump under pressure and visibly got under his skin. Hillary Clinton’s main task, meanwhile, was to turn the spotlight on Trump’s past sins and to try to provoke him into an intemperate reaction, all without seeming supercilious. If part of the test was whether the candidates “looked presidential”, it was glaringly obvious by the end that a Trump presidency would radically redefine what that means. He also repeated untruths on which he has previously been corrected – to put it bluntly, lying.īut perhaps the strongest impression he made was in how he carried himself: ranting, hectoring, often shouting. He was unable to grasp with even moderate seriousness the issues, even when it came to his own proposals, and what positions he did articulate frequently appeared incoherent. He had clearly failed to prepare adequately for the occasion. ![]() And in the end, the tens of millions of people who ultimately tuned in were given a stark view of Trump’s deep – many would say disqualifying – flaws. ![]() If that was the plan, he didn’t have the self-control to pull it off perhaps he didn’t even try. ![]() The debate gave him an opportunity to present himself unfiltered to an audience predicted to rival that of a Super Bowl, and to reinvent himself as a calmer, more coherent candidate for the benefit of the unusually large number of undecided voters up for grabs. The big question going into the first debate of the presidential election was whether Donald Trump would decide to tone down the cartoonish, belligerent alpha male shtick that has carried him this far.
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