By Terry Manning
A professional obligation prevented me from watching the first presidential debate as it was broadcast live on CNN.
I got back to my hotel room just as the post-debate commentary was beginning. It was brutal.
The same sad song was being played from one channel to the next.
“This was painful.”
“The debate was a travesty.”
“The Democratic Party has to find another way forward.”
I texted a friend, “They’re making it sound like President Biden is a dead man walking. Was it that bad?” When I didn’t hear back from her immediately, I suspected the worst.
I turned the TV off and settled into a fitful sleep.
My friend texted me the next morning to say she’d fallen asleep and missed the debate entirely. That made me feel better.
Want to know what else made me feel better? I found the debate on Apple Podcasts and listened to it for myself.
What I heard included some fumbling many had reported about Biden. He sounded hoarse, a little off his game. I laughed a couple of times in noting he seemed over-coached. He stuttered in trying to recall minutiae, anecdotes, statistics, and facts.
Who didn’t stumble over minutiae, anecdotes, statistics, and facts was the man across the stage from him: Donald Trump. I groaned while listening to him as it became clear early on that he didn’t prepare for the debate like Biden did because he didn’t have to.
Trump said the same stuff he’s been saying for years: America is under attack. Terrorists are flooding our borders and “killing our women.” Immigrants are stealing from the social safety net and voting illegally. The 2020 Election was stolen from him. Everything was so much better when he was president!
The only new trick he floated was the immigrant threat to “Black jobs,” another in a series of ill-conceived attempts to appeal to Black voters. Social media collectively responded to that by asking, “What, pray tell, is a ‘Black job?’”
I also noted how CNN commentators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper paid more attention to clock-watching than fact-checking. No matter what outlandish assertion Trump made, the CNN anchors merely replied with a polite “Thank you” before moving on to their next questions.
I have long criticized CNN for giving too much airtime to Trump acolytes. I don’t know how it helps the public to give equal footing to people who make factual statements and those who blatantly lie and mischaracterize the truth to favor Trump.
Sure, they had a fact-checker review statements made by both candidates after the fact, but by then Biden critics were feasting on video clips and soundbites that made him look incompetent.
Notice I wrote, “look.” Because Biden didn’t sound nearly as bad as what I’d been positioned to expect.
I was reminded of stories about the first televised presidential debate, between then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Sen. John Kennedy.
Legend has it that people who watched the debate on television thought Kennedy was the stronger candidate because he was more telegenic compared to Nixon, who was described as disheveled and having a “sweaty upper lip.” Radio listeners thought Nixon was stronger on the issues and that Kennedy was glib and patronizing.
In a recent story about that debate, U.S. News & World Report quotes columnist William White, who questioned the notion that a televised debate would affect the vote’s outcome:
“There is … no miraculous way to ride the electronic waves to the presidency: no gold mine of easily extracted votes in the TV sky.”
I wonder what he would have written about a former reality TV personality reaching the Oval Office. Especially one whose convincing image as a successful businessman was largely fabricated by staging and in the editing room.
When I asked a family member his thoughts on the debate, he replied, “It was awful.”
“You think Biden lost that badly, huh?”
“Between Biden’s stumbles and Trump’s lies, I think the whole country lost.”
If we let 90 minutes make us forget what the last eight years comprised, for better and for worse, that certainly will be the case.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
