by
Laura Lai/Comment
Until the topic on
race, both candidates competed in convincing who a better executive would be.
It is on the topic of race, that Trump showed that he can also be a leader:
‘Yes, I do [understand why Black parents fear for their children]. He [referring to Joe Biden] was in government for 47 years. He didn’t do anything except the 1994 when he did such a harm to the Black community (…). Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump (…). Nobody had done what I’ve done. Criminal Justice Reform – Obama and Joe didn’t do it; they might have wanted it, but if you would see the arms I’ve got twisted to get that done, it was not a pretty picture. And everybody knows, including some liberals that cried in my office – they cried in the Oval Office (…).’
During this debate, Trump talked to both the moderator and Biden, and he also looked straight to the camera. Joe Biden played again well with the camera, pointing to the viewers – many of them potential American voters – and made several emotional appeals: ‘we should be talking about your families, but this is the last thing he [Trump] wants to talk about’, because of the coronavirus, many families have an empty chair in the kitchen, the family table pops-up again in his speech, his daughter works as a social worker, there are 5000 children that were separated from their families and there are difficulites to reunite them, etc. – this contrasts with Trump’s pragmatism. On this matter, Joe Biden got a spontaneous crtitique from Donald Trump:
‘Typical politician! China… and then he looks at the family round the table… Typical politician! I’m not a typical politician. That’s why I got elected.’
All along the debate, Biden was ‘Joe’ for Trump, while Trump was several time ‘this guy’ for Biden. Anyway, there is lot of improvement in comparison to the first debate, when words like ‘liar’, ‘irresponsable’, ‘clown’ were more frequent in Biden’s discourse. What stayed constant, thought, was the elegance of the current First Lady and the wife of Joe Biden.
And
speaking of elegance, the Debate Commission on Presidential Elections decided
to cut the microphone to all speakers that exceed their time. When one hears
the two candidates talking particularly referring to past different policies
and decisions on those issues, one can easily understand that there is a lot of
history between them – in the sense that they can long argue. The cutting of
the microphone of two people that have a lot to say, the cutting of microphone at
this high level of politics that the entire world is watching may easily
degenerate in a half sound political movie and half mute. I was, actually,
fearing that I would see each speaker mumbling something important, but without
microphone and that we all must lip read! ‘October 22nd Night Show’
is what I was thinking. But no! I was wrong. The cutting of the microphone
issue was dealt elegantly and speaker’s reaction to being cut was elegant, too.
In the end, it was an ‘October 22nd, Presidential Debate Night’.
To sum up, this last U.S. Presidential Debate brought together two people with a different character, different stand on political issues and two different approaches to political issues, but one goal – that of becoming the President of the United States. Donald Trump and Joe Biden have different career backgrounds – which was a reason for Trump to remind Biden that he had 47 years time to implement all the ideas he had that evening, and eight recent years as vice-president. Donald Trump was more precise – and quicker – in exposing his arguments and in providing answers, while Joe Biden sometimes looks for his words, needs to remember what he wanted to say – only during this debate he corrected himself two or three times and resumed with ‘excuse-me’. Of course, it is excusable from a human point of view! Just that this was a presidential debate for the highest position on the planet. Despite many voices saying that it was a draw and that there was no winner of this debate, there was a winner. There is a winner of this debate, even if they both got an ‘A’. The fact that one got an ‘A+’ and the other one an ‘A-‘ we still have a winner of this last debate!
You may also want to watch the Saturday Night Show – a political satire of these two presidential debates with Alec Baldwin (Donald Trump) and Jim Carrey (Joe Biden):
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