Maybe you heeded the sportswriter who advised watching “World Series of Poker” (a stress-free distraction) or staring at photos of baby llamas (blissfully narcotizing). But if you were among the supposed 100 million viewers who spent Monday night with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, then you saw what we did: moments of primal strength, but neither candidate knocked senseless.
Score this first debate as a cliffhanger still awaiting its climax. Partisans saw just what they came to see; flipping channels afterward, we were amused at the certainty with which talking heads declared Clinton, or Trump, the winner. We’ll all learn from opinion polls of coming days how much of that was mere cheerleading. But for most of the national audience, we’d wager, Monday night was less about the issues than about the gladiators: Did Clinton look healthy and likable enough to be America’s president? (Probably yes.) Did Trump come across as a bully, a buffoon or both? (Not really. A cynic would say he did come across as a New Yorker.)
In the crucial first 45 minutes, with viewers open-minded and social media revving up, Clinton largely stuck to talking points about jobs and a better economy; Trump talked over her to accuse U.S. politicians, Clinton included, of letting American employers fire workers here and flee to other countries. Neither candidate blew us away, but we were glad neither lives next door. Clinton, determined not to take grief from her opponent, spent the night addressing him as “Donald,” not Mr. Trump. He in turn tried to look decorous and respectful — not the crazy candidate you’ve heard about — by addressing her as “Secretary Clinton.”
For Clinton, one of Monday night’s challenges was to unleash Trump, to send him into the rants that satisfy his loyalists but frighten centrist voters. That didn’t really happen. Nor did Clinton come across as a humorless policy wonk. We wondered going into the night whether Trump could survive by sticking to broad themes, or whether Clinton’s command of facts and figures would dazzle us. That deep chasm didn’t open.
Nothing either candidate said strayed from what Americans have already heard. The night was all about style.
Trump had the choice of which among his personalities to project — brash, charming, impatient, supremely confident. Viewers saw flashes of each, but he grew especially energetic in declaring himself the law and order candidate — and citing Chicago as a city overwhelmed by violent crime, with thousands of people shot this year. “Is this a war-torn country?” Trump asked. “What are we doing? …. Almost 4,000 people have been killed in Chicago since Barack Obama became president.” (Chicago police count close to 3,700.) Clinton responded with praise for community policing, a critique of stop-and-frisk tactics and a call for programs that steer young men in troubled neighborhoods into jobs and away from a life of crime.
On companion questions with implications for the next four years — Do you want Trump in the Oval Office? Do you want Clinton on the TV in your living room? — neither candidate was as off-putting as his or her detractors had hoped. Trump interjected one-liners to throw Clinton off her game; her prescriptions for addressing many problems America faces opened with variations of, I’ve developed a plan …
Where did the candidates land at the end of the night? Not clear. Trump’s polling numbers have been more erratic than Clinton’s; many voters already knew what they think of her. Trump was Monday night’s variable. Going into this debate, she held a lead of barely 2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of nine national polls. Owing to Trump’s late-summer rise in the polls, that was one-third of her lead six weeks earlier.
In another six weeks we’ll learn whether, back on a Monday night in September, she or Trump began to make the better closing argument to America.
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