PSYCHOLOGISTS that whenever a person is faced with two similar objects or indeed individuals, the default response is to prefer one over the other. It is not often that people remain completely indifferent. So it was on Monday night when America’s least-appealing presidential candidates for many years, went head to head on television.
Seeing Trump and Clinton side by side had a remarkable effect. The bombastic bigot’s blustering and hectoring performance served to make the shape-shifting chameleon-like Clinton appear as an heroic stone monument to high principles. To US voters despairing of having a viable choice in November, Hillary Clinton will suddenly have looked good. It may not have occurred to them that this perception came about because the Donald suddenly seemed so brazenly bad. There was one telling contrast between the two debaters. It was clear that Clinton, ever the machine politician, had done a lot of preparation for the encounter. This doubtless involved test debates in which she had been challenged far more aggressively than even Trump and the moderator did on Monday. She had a bunch of sound bites which she took care to slot into her answers.
Trump on the other hand was all over the place. If his campaign team had even tried to brief and rehearse him, he had either clearly thrown them out of the room or, if he had endured the process, had completely forgotten the lessons that emerged. Put bluntly, this man seemed simply too undisciplined to hold the most powerful job in the world. His attempt to capitalize obliquely on Clinton’s recent illness by warning she did not have the stamina to be president served her the slow lob she had been hoping for, which she slammed back over the net. She spoke of her visits to 112 countries when she was Obama’ Secretary of State and then, with a finely-time pause, added that she had also endured a 12 hour grilling by Congress over her controversial use of a private server for her emails.
Trump came over very much as the consummate businessman that he claims is one of his core virtues. His talk was all devoted to winning the deal, shaving a view here, boosting an inducement there, mixing threat with affection and generally filling any awkward silences with words. And the property deal he wants to clinch is the occupancy of the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, Clinton came over as the archetypal lawyer, perfectly willing and completely able to argue that black is white if the fee and inducements were right. The greatest confidence that she inspired, was win or lose the case, her bill was going to be extremely high.
Pundits are giving the result to Clinton but then since most pundits are liberal, that is no surprise. But Trump should be worried that his center-right Fox news cheerleaders didn’t think much of his performance either. He simply did not look presidential.
The reality was that neither candidate shone during their 90 minute encounter. There were times when both seemed to be spinning out their answers in a desperate attempt to fill time, rather as exhausted boxers grapple in a clinch trying hold on to each other till the bell rings the end of the round. The difference between the boxing ring and the TV studio is that neither of these presidential contestants remotely looked like a heavyweight.
