The 2016 Presidential Debates: Round 1 — Constructive(?) Criticism

"It is more a spectacle than a sport, one of the purest forms of atavistic endeavor still extant in a world that only big-time politicians feel a need to call 'civilized.'"

-- Hunter S. Thompson

The first debate between candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton promised to be quite the spectacle indeed, after a political season that has seen some of the most divisive rhetoric and some of the most baffling antics of any political race in the history of...well, maybe the world. Which is saying quite a lot, considering that electoral democracy was invented by the ancient Greeks, and they were absolute perverts - considering what they found acceptable, I shudder to think what a candidate would have had to do and say to appear controversial by their standards. But that is quite beside the point.

In the days leading up to the debate, networks were predicting record setting ratings, with estimates that as many as 100 million people would tune in, despite the fact that it was competing with one of the great institutions in American television - Monday Night Football (in which the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints would face off), that the two nominees are probably the most actively hated nominees in American history, and that the "third party" nominees - Gary Johnson of the Libertarians and Jill Stein of the Green Party - were excluded to the dismay of their growing voter bases. Clinton and Trump have been lobbing insults at each other for about a year now, so it was safe to assume that this debate might conceivably devolve into a fistfight.

Hillary Clinton appeared to be fresh from a beauty parlor, or perhaps a few days of round-the-clock plastic surgery, looking better than she has in about twenty years. Maybe she's been paying attention to the things said about her in the press - that she looks frumpy, that her pants suits are unflattering, that she's an alien lizard creature bent on controlling mankind.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, looked about like he always looks - that is to say, he looked like a sunburned toad in an expensive suit. But, to his credit, he appeared to be more of a presidential toad than he ever has. Sure, he lapsed into abrasive language and allowed himself to be goaded by Clinton's barbs about his business record, his bigotry, and his tendency to resort to ad hominem attacks - but he was far more measured and dignified than he normally is, abstaining for the most part from the kind of shenanigans that, frankly, would have made the thing entertaining enough to be halfway watchable. I made myself sit through all of it, sans a few smoke breaks and one fifteen minute break to go stand on my back porch and just stare at anything but my TV, and I damn near thought I might go insane from the sheer inanity of it. Towards the end, Clinton scored a major blow by attacking comments he's made about women, and allowed him to just punch himself out in an anticlimactic denouement of petty comments in defense of his wounded ego....including an obligatory reference to Rosie O'Donnell, a woman that Trump has such an obsession with that he must be desperately in love with her. The candidates shook hands, and it was mercifully over.

Both of the candidates stuck pretty much strictly to talking points which we've all heard. Of course nothing really new ever comes from a presidential debate, and this one was no different. Now, after the fact, I think that my time would have been better spent watching the Falcons-Saints game.

The vice presidential debate will air on Tuesday, October 4th, and the second presidential debate will air on Sunday, October 9th.