Last night's debate wasn't a disappointment. It was as vile and dishonorable as the last one, and as the next one is likely to be as well. I have no illusions about Donald Trump. He is despicable as ever, and he will never change. His lack of intellectual integrity isn't any revelation either, nor is his narcissism, his imperiousness and on and on and on. But Bill Clinton has always said that Hillary is the best person he knows. He says she is smart, tenacious, noble and dedicated to high principles. Yet, when she gets on a debate stage--and this isn't new--she becomes less than what her husband professes her to be in every respect. She is almost a caricature...her impression of a politician with all the ugliness and vain crassness that our political class has imbued the profession with. And what's worst about it is how flailing and inept she becomes when on the stage. For example, with two credibly unbiased moderators running the debate, she managed to alienate them with a tactic that I think is contrived out of a sense that it connotes power. She gives these desultory answers to even simple questions that always lapse into her stock platitudes about social and economic justice--which is what all politicians do so you can't really blame her for descending to the middle of the pack on that point--but then, when her time is up she insists on talking over the moderators for fifteen or twenty flailing seconds with utterances that are just more of the same political pap that she has just preached to her own choir. Instead of wooing the opposition's choir with cogent new ideas, she regales us all with her campaign lines, which the opposition isn't going to buy anyway. It is a self-destructive tactic meant, it appears, to project formidability while all it really does is confirm the worst things that people...even her own people...think about her. Is she as incorrigible as her opponent, or is she jut getting bad advice? And last night was particularly embarrassing in that respect.
I don't even remember what outrageous thing Trump had just said, but the first thing out of Clinton's mouth in response was a quote from a Michelle Obama refrain: "when they go low, we go high." After she said it, applause broke out in the otherwise quiet studio in violation of the adjured silence imposed by the moderators at the beginning of the whole thing. She basked in it for a second and then lapsed into another calculated and convoluted attack on her opponent that was probably less than 10% relevant to the insult he had just slung at her. It was just one more generic rant against Trump and what he stands for...far from going high. In fact, she seemed to have perverted Obama's exhortation; Trump had gone low, so Clinton did too. In fact, in instances in which the opportunity to "go high" was just about put up on a tee in front of her, she chose to take the low road even though it was the harder choice. The debate started out with a discussion of Trump's most recent contra temps about being able to grope women because they let him since he is famous. Trump had just stooped to criticism of Bill Clinton's conduct with women, which albeit deplorable isn't the issue in this election, in lieu of an effective defense or sincere and unqualified apology. One of the moderators turned to Clinton to ask what she thought of Trump's half-hearted excuse of "locker room banter," which he had characterized as an apology. It was the perfect opportunity to project nobility and grace...to go high even though he had gone low. All she had to do was what Carly Fiorina did in the same situation. She could have just said, "I think that American women know what Donald Trump thinks about women. As they say, done and done, but nooo. She had to claim to go high and then go low right with him, leaving herself looking like a back-biting, mindless attack dog rather than the noble sage standing above the fray. And she went on and on until the moderators told her she was out of time, and then had to insist in order to shut her up. A few choice words would have more than sufficed, and would have aggrandized her at the same time...and she needs aggrandizing. But she was not only incapable of seizing the moment, she had to turn it into a liability.
Like the people who are voting for Trump, it isn't that any of this is going to keep me from voting for Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anything that would make me vote for her opposite number. But where Clinton needs support is from the non-partisan and undecided third of the voting public, and she throws the opportunity to court them away with both hands whenever she can. I've said this before, and I'll say it again...along with all of her other critics: she has poor judgment, and that's being kind. And in her way, she is the wicked witch of fairy tales incarnate. But--and this is a sad commentary on the state of American politics--she's the better choice...God help us.
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment