Alan Zendell, September 11, 2024

Usually, presidential debates do not deserve the name debate. A debate whose purpose is to illuminate competing policies and visions for the future can only work when both participants are there in good faith. By that definition, any debate that includes Donald Trump must fail. For Trump, debates are about intimidation, anger, lies, fantasies, and an immense ego constantly competing with good sense.

Last night’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris was true to form, except for the outcome. When Hillary Clinton debated Trump in 2016, it was clear that neither she nor her staff were prepared to deal with the onslaught of venomous rants he threw at her. In fairness, neither were any of the fifteen Republicans he vanquished in the primaries. No one was because no one like Donald Trump had ever been on a presidential debate stage before.

Never in all the presidential elections I’ve witnessed has a candidate running for an office that bears responsibility for defending our democracy and our Constitution been as craven and self-centered, so completely devoid of compassion and concern for the American people. For Clinton, it must have felt like going to a petting zoo and finding herself facing an angry, desperate lion in the savannah.

The same tactics that partly unnerved Clinton, didn’t work quite as effectively against Joe Biden in 2020. But in 2024, against an older, frailer Biden who was already trailing badly in the polls because of his age, Trump’s predatory, nonstop assault looked like the Nazi blitzkrieg of Poland. Clearly off his game since Biden dropped out of the race, we knew Trump didn’t possess the discipline to debate Harris properly. That’s partly because Trump has no policy details to offer, but mostly because he’s mentally ill with a narcissistic disorder that leaves him vulnerable to anyone who recognizes his Achilles heel.

Clearly, Harris and her handlers did. They knew the debate would not be won on policy. Harris presented her vision for a strong middle class, but as usual, Trump couldn’t focus on policy for more than a couple of minutes, when his fractured ego took over. If Trump’s plan was to smother her in a torrent of insane rants, hers was to needle him and get under his skin, and she did that with the accomplished skill of a successful federal prosecutor. She did it without raising her voice or sneering, and she delivered the most telling blows looking him straight in his eyes, while he, noticeably, seemed unable to look at her.

If the debate wasn’t about policy, what was it about? In the cult of personality that is the MAGA movement, Trump’s ego was all it could have been about. We’ve heard from most of the senior members of Trump’s Cabinet, most notably his Chiefs of Staff, Security Advisors, and Defnese Secretaries, about what it was like to be on the inside of his administration. In a world in which military leaders never speak out against their Commander in Chief, each of them described Trump as unfit to lead, incompetent, and dangerous. They told us how everything Trump does is transactional, ego-driven, and primarily focused on his own self-interest and prejudices. But Trump claims he fired them because they couldn’t do their jobs, and now they’re  getting even by undermining his candidacy.

That has worked well enough in the past to fool about two-fifths of America. Trump has always been masterful at turning things around and accusing his accusers of exactly what he is guilty of, and much of America has been unable to see through that. Any professional writer will tell you that a good story must show the reader what happens rather than just tell them about it, and that was Harris’s strategy.

Calling him names and insulting him would simply reduce her to his level. Instead, she calmly and skillfully executed a plan to enable us to watch Trump immolate himself, and he took the bait every time. He took it because he was unable to resist taking it, and he plunged into deeper and deeper rabbit holes every time. And while he fumed and ranted, becoming more incoherent and absurd with each passing moment, Harris smiled, arched her eyebrows, and used subtle body language to let everyone know she was in complete control.

Harris showed us she is ready to lead, and that she possesses both the strength and integrity to be president. But more importantly, she manipulated Trump into showing America why he can’t be trusted with power. If a multi-racial woman, whom he has repeatedly called stupid, weak, and incompetent could rattle him to the point where he was dysfunctional, Americans should ask, today, how easily he could be manipulated by people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Trump’s vulnerability is America’s vulnerability, and the world is far too dangerous for us to take that kind of risk.

For me, the best moment was when Harris told Trump that world leaders mocked him, and he responded by spending a full minute telling us how much Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban loves him.

Did you see enough?