The Bright Side of the Trump/Biden Debate
by Austen Brennan
Most of the hot-takes about last week’s presidential debate have already been written; America has moved on from that spectacle to the much more serious news of President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis and subsequent irresponsible behavior. Though several prominent conservative commentators have said the diagnosis is horrible news for Trump’s candidacy, and his actions since testing positive bear this out, I think the small amount of sympathy given his high-risk status, and the opportunity for the President’s opponents to beclown themselves by mocking him while he’s in potentially mortal danger, provide a distraction from his antics on stage last Tuesday. If he wants a chance of winning on November 3rd, a distraction is something he sorely needs.
To put it mildly, that debate was a national embarrassment. I’ve likened it to tossing bovine excrement into an oscillating fan: bullshit all over the place. Joe Biden refused to answer basic questions about whether he would undermine such key American institutions as the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Electoral College for purely partisan reasons. He paid lip service to law and order right before calling law enforcement systemically racist. For Trump’s part, he neurotically focused in on perhaps the least important of the issues he could have raised against his opponent: Hunter Biden supposedly receiving millions from the former mayor of Moscow. Add in the constant badgering, interrupting, fighting with the moderator, and just general unpleasantness from both parties, one wonders how this debate could possibly be good for the country.
And yet…
Have you ever been in a nasty argument with someone—a close friend or family member—where either of you said something so awful that you both stopped? Realizing things had gone too far, the reaction from both sides is to simply pause and process what just happened, and then, likely, to try and de-escalate the situation. Maybe you tried to reset the discussion; maybe you spent some time apart to cool down. Either way, the subsequent interactions were likely calmer, whether naturally so or forced.
Last week’s debate may have been that moment. Even if it wasn’t, it’s certainly a sign that we’re getting close. Revulsion has thus far been the universal reaction, and while the media has been focused in on Trump’s part in it, I think plenty of people were also dismayed—given the perception he’s created for himself in this campaign—by Joe Biden’s performance. Indeed, I think Marco Rubio has some reason to feel a bit vindicated after watching the two current candidates trading blows.
I know we’ve had about a trillion news cycles since the last presidential campaign, but does anybody remember when in the 2016 Republican primaries Rubio started mocking Trump’s hand size and making thinly veiled references to his male anatomy? The exact quote was: “He’s always calling me Little Marco. And I’ll admit he’s taller than me. He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″. Have you seen his hands? They’re like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.” Rubio got destroyed for doing this, not because he had started the downward spiral in decorum, but because he was supposed to be a more principled and better person than Trump. Everyone knew at the time (as they do now, unless they’re lying to themselves) that Trump behaves like a jackass. But, as the old saying goes, if you lie down with dogs, you come up with fleas. Rubio couldn’t really claim to be better than Trump if he was willing to play Trump’s game, and the Florida senator was on tilt from that moment until the inevitable end of his campaign.
I don’t think Biden went full-Rubio in the debate, but he went at least half-Rubio. Can you really claim to be the light-bringer, the return to normalcy guy, when you’re telling the President to shut up? And remember, Biden telling Trump to shut up didn’t come after Trump had insulted his son, or pretended not to know his other son (Beau, who by all accounts served honorably in the military and died of cancer in 2015). It came because Trump was—rightly in that moment—pestering Biden on court-packing, which Biden had repeatedly avoided answering. Mister Moderate refusing to answer whether he’d undermine and politicize an institution explicitly set up to be above our politics and then snapping at the president for demanding an answer is not a good look. Was Trump worse? On style, most certainly. But—and I say this as someone for whom Trump’s style was a deal-breaker in 2016 and might again be this year—style isn’t everything.
Both candidates gave us reason to be disgusted by them. The refrain I heard from close friends and family after the debate was the exact same one as 2016: “how on Earth, in the greatest country in history, is this the best we can do? How?” Everyone’s fed up, and I think that ultimately could be a good thing, as it means people will soon (if they haven’t already) begin demanding more from our politics, no matter which side they’re on. We’ve been taken over by extremists, and people who talk like extremists, but at some point those who pine for less sound and fury and more tangible, principled solutions and elevated discourse will realize that they are more numerous than those who’ve turned our politics upside down.
I know this probably comes across as a lengthy exercise in turd-polishing, but I promise I’m not trying to deny the reality of last Tuesday. The debate was a national embarrassment and a bleak sign, to be sure, but it comes with the silver lining I mentioned earlier: people are starting to think we’re going too far, and my hope is that they decide to do something constructive about it.
Here is the glorious Weird Al Yankovic making sense of all this