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Two argumentitive kids vying for the presidency

By Christopher Curran
Posted 10/5/16

Well the first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign season has come and gone, and most voters have been rendered nonplussed by the experience. The hope of supporters and undecided voters was that a positive picture of the candidates' policies,

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Two argumentitive kids vying for the presidency

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Well the first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign season has come and gone, and most voters have been rendered nonplussed by the experience.

The hope of supporters and undecided voters was that a positive picture of the candidates’ policies, character, possible presidential demeanor, and overall temperament would show in clarity. Instead, we witnessed a childish display of insincerity, dimwitted redundancy, gotcha verbal assails, and incongruous banter.

What the candidates have somehow lost track of is the gravity and importance of this election. Sorrowfully in this debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton cast the contest as a frivolous exercise in character assassination and schoolyard one-upmanship. Brutal negativity well exceeded sound presentations of political ideology and prospective policy.

As a result, voters who are desperately trying to decide between the lesser of two evils were not significantly helped by the proceedings.

Our country is imperiled by an ineffective foreign policy, an astronomically growing burden of ever expanding entitlements, a crushing national debt, and continually abating manufacturing sector. Yet, these most crucial issues were not satisfactorily addressed in the debate.

So let us examine this first foray between the Democrat nominee Clinton and the Republican nominee Trump. Did we learn anything nascent and pertinent? Or was this merely a wasted 90 minutes of name-calling and silly emotion-provoking accusations?

The debate started out civilly with the usually competently performing moderator, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, explaining the topics and the segmentation of time modules and how he expected that his planned subjects might not be addressed. Boy, was he correct.

In the first 15 minutes, the easily volatile Trump seemed to have found his presidential voice. He was deliberate and polite and incredulously said to his opponent, “I want you to be very happy.” One can speculate that if the Donald had kept that initial tone throughout the forum he would have faired better.

However, Clinton knew how to ignite the tinder of Trump’s irrational explosiveness.

When posed the question by Holt about putting more money in the American worker’s pockets, Trump of course started rattling off how China and Mexico are cheating us on trade deals. Then he gave his usual catalog opera of naming states that have lost manufacturing. Repetitively, he stated Ohio and Michigan have lost factories, and over and over he said it was terrible and our plight was due to bad trade deals.

The only specific proposal besides his usual redundant naming of states in descent, countries which are bamboozling us, and supposed better trade deal making was that he wished to change the top-end business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Clinton responded by throwing one of the defamatory matches she had been waiting to hurl on the Trump personality powder keg. She stated: “He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people the better off we’ll be and that everything will work out from there.”

Well since Trump has downplayed the “daddy” loan amount often to a million, or on other occasions to a couple of million, he became livid at the $14 million claim. He stridently responded: “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that’s worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assets in the world and I say that only because that’s the kind of thinking our country needs.”

What this line of dialogue has to do with anything relevant to evaluate a potential president administrating the executive branch of government, no one knows. Is the point that it is not good to have a rich father to stake you in life, or that a couple of million is a pittance and not a real help in starting out? The electorate learned nothing cogent from this exchange. Hillary scored her successful provocation and Donald showed his thin skin and his constant propensity to try to prove his questionable business triumphs and the perpetuation of the myth that he is self-made.

Then Holt asked the candidates how they would bring jobs back to the country. Trump again referred to trade and as usual did not directly answer the question: “The companies are leaving. And what you do is say fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck. We wish you a lot of luck. But if you think you’re going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies, or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax, you’re wrong.”

Hillary, faced with the same question, reviewed the direness of the Great Recession and then used the question as a foundation of another attack against Trump: “In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said back in 2006, ‘Gee I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make money).’ Well it did collapse.” Trump interrupted with: “That’s called business, by the way.”

So, neither candidate answered the question. And no information was gained that is constructive in making a voting decision.

Then Clinton strangely steered the conversation into climate change to set up her next attack: “Donald thinks climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.” In response, Trump repeated: “I did not, I did not, I did not say that.” Besides the childlike retort, it has been well documented that several times in the past Trump denounced the science of climate change.

From there, the digression became worse. Trump yelled: “I will bring, excuse me I will bring back jobs. You can’t bring back jobs.” Trump continued in an accusatory manner stating that President Bill Clinton signed the North American Trade Agreement into law and that has ruined the United States.

Hillary responded not by correcting Trump (George H. W. Bush actually signed NAFTA into law in December 1992), but instead by showcasing the accomplishments of her husband in office: “I think my husband did a pretty good job in the 1990s, millions of new jobs, a balanced budget.” Does she mean to imply that if she is elected, Bill Clinton will be running a shadow government for her? If not, what does this have to do with how she will handle the jobs dilemma?

Trump tried to hit her back with: “You go to New England, you go to Ohio, Pennsylvania, you go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufactures [I think he meant manufacturers] are down 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent.” What that retort has to do with her point, no one knows. Yes Donald, we have lost manufacturing and the Rust Belt does include Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, and you are adept at enumerating some of our states. Yet there was no specific presentation from either candidate on how to comprehensively bring manufacturing back to our shores.

Still, the cross-talk became more than childish, it became surrealistic.

Trump: “No wonder you’ve been fighting – no wonder you’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.” Huh? ISIS has existed for only a decade.

Clinton: “I have a feeling that by the end of the evening I’m going to be blamed for everything that’s ever happened.”

Trump: “Why not?”

Following those corrosive exchanges, they talked about overweight beauty queens, comedian Rosie O’Donnell, 400-pound hackers in their beds, and how smart the Donald has been by avoiding paying any taxes. If the future of the country were not at stake, the entire affair would have been comical.

But our country’s future is on the line, and voters did not gain anything useful from this forum. This debate was supposed to be an informative discourse on how these two people would handle the most essential job in the nation. Instead, we witnessed a childish squabble between two self-possessed egomaniacs and learned little in valuable information to help us form an opinion on who is the lesser of evils.

More substantial arguments can be heard in lunchrooms at middle schools. Only the participants there might be better behaved.

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  • RISchadenfreude

    Debates are a waste of airtime- watching the candidates answer the loaded questions of the hosts in the mainstream media, who have given up all pretense of neutrality, is brain-numbing and/or infuriating. Most candidates lack even the most rudimentary conversation skills, talking over and interrupting each other, taking childish jabs at each other.

    The one thing most have forgotten is how to steer the conversation from the "loaded" (or often stupid) questions; people seem to treat the media as if they're under oath and HAVE to answer their questions. For example, when Scott Walker was asked by a reporter for his opinion on the Confederate Flag controversy following a shooting last year, he told the reporter that the important thing was to grieve with and support the victims of the shooting. When RISP Supt. O'Donnell was asked a loaded question about the racially-motivated killing of two NYPD officers last year, he told the reporter that the RI contingent of officers was going to NYC to pay their respects and support the families of the slain officers, and when someone was ready to have an honest conversation about race relations, he'd be happy to participate- such responses give the media nowhere to go. It's like the old Groucho Marx "Do you still beat your wife?" question- there's no right answers to many of the questions the media asks, and they act as if they are owed an answer.

    Friday, October 7, 2016 Report this