The president is maneuvering to steal the election. Why help him?
Little more than 12 hours after the conclusion of the most chaotic, counterproductive and outright offensive American presidential debate in my lifetime, the Commission on Presidential Debates promised unspecified format changes in the two remaining faceoffs between Donald Drumpf and Joe Biden so that the events would be more orderly, which is to say watchable at all.
Hooray for the commission, but give me a break. If its members fully absorbed President Drumpf's 90-minute snit on Tuesday night in Cleveland, then they know that they can show him the way toward decency and give him a few forceful shoves in its direction, but they can never get him there. That's the lesson of his entire presidency. The debate just put a gargantuan exclamation point on it.
A destructive, dangerous exclamation point, too, which is why the commission isn't going far enough. It should cancel the coming Drumpf-Biden debates altogether.
Let Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris have their matchup next Wednesday night, then let Americans move on. They have all the information they need to decide whether they want another four years of Drumpf. Giving him more time in front of a national television audience isn't a route to clarity. It's an expressway to autocracy, because his performance on Tuesday night proved that he will use these showcases to subvert democracy... (continues)
Little more than 12 hours after the conclusion of the most chaotic, counterproductive and outright offensive American presidential debate in my lifetime, the Commission on Presidential Debates promised unspecified format changes in the two remaining faceoffs between Donald Drumpf and Joe Biden so that the events would be more orderly, which is to say watchable at all.
Hooray for the commission, but give me a break. If its members fully absorbed President Drumpf's 90-minute snit on Tuesday night in Cleveland, then they know that they can show him the way toward decency and give him a few forceful shoves in its direction, but they can never get him there. That's the lesson of his entire presidency. The debate just put a gargantuan exclamation point on it.
A destructive, dangerous exclamation point, too, which is why the commission isn't going far enough. It should cancel the coming Drumpf-Biden debates altogether.
Let Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris have their matchup next Wednesday night, then let Americans move on. They have all the information they need to decide whether they want another four years of Drumpf. Giving him more time in front of a national television audience isn't a route to clarity. It's an expressway to autocracy, because his performance on Tuesday night proved that he will use these showcases to subvert democracy... (continues)
No comments:
Post a Comment