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Michael Cianchette is a Navy reservist who served in Afghanistan. He is in-house counsel to a number of businesses in southern Maine and was a chief counsel to former Gov. Paul LePage.
That was awful.
The second presidential debate of 2024 — and the first featuring Kamala Harris — was a mess. Campaigns are fighting over who won. I think America lost.
At the very beginning, Vice President Harris was asked the quintessential question in any presidential campaign: Are Americans better off today than they were four years ago?
Instead, she used an age-old trick lampooned in Pixar’s “Zootopia.” Change the question to something you like, then answer the new question.
The knock on the incumbent vice president going into the debate was that she shied away from unscripted live interactions with the press. Ducking questions on the debate stage right off the bat was not an effective strategy to quell those concerns.
Then Donald Trump started.
Instead of focusing on the substance of the question Harris dodged — are Americans better off than they were four years ago? — he flopped.
After the first presidential debate, lots of Democrats tried to defend Joe Biden by attacking Trump’s performance. Regardless of how well — or not — you thought Trump did, Biden clearly lost.
The shoe was on the other foot this time.
I think it’s fair to say Harris wasn’t great. Answering whether people are better off now that she has been vice president for nearly four years is a hard question, but the presidency is a hard job. You don’t just get to do the easy parts.
A lot of her digs at Trump felt over-rehearsed. Arguing about how many people attend his rallies but leave early was inane. Are those really the concerns of the nation?
But, if I am going to be objective, Trump was worse.
The format did not help him. ABC’s moderators became part of the repartee, attempting to fact-check claims in real time. It was a marked difference from CNN’s efforts in the Trump-Biden debate, where the moderators were intentionally questioners, not umpires.
But, just like in every high school football game occurring throughout Maine this weekend, you don’t get to blame the refs.
Where Trump goes from here is anyone’s guess. Washington Republicans, while far from saying the former president should drop out, are openly questioning his effort. It is similar to the panic of Democrats following Biden’s prior poor performance.
The kicker is that Trump’s poor showing is almost entirely his own fault. Even after the debate, voters far prefer him to Harris when it comes to the economy and immigration. And the economy remains the biggest issue for Americans. Those two facts should have set him up for success.
They didn’t.
Time and again, Trump went on long, winding soliloquies making a wide array of accusations. The points he was apparently trying to make — some substantive, some less so — got lost in the word salad.
Given all of that, Harris was the “winner” of the debate insofar as Trump was the “loser.”
Yet, abstracting up a level, it was really a “win” for those who benefit from seeing America struggle as a cohesive nation. We have real, serious issues to deal with.
Our national debt is unsustainable.
China is facing significant internal challenges, which present concerns when the communist party needs a scapegoat.
Social security is less than a decade away from massive cuts.
The debate didn’t offer any real, considered ideas on how to solve these problems.
As we move into the sprint towards November, I can only hope that our two major candidates might reconsider their approach. Harris needs to stand up and answer hard questions directly. Trump needs to drop the emotional word salad and engage on the major issues facing our nation, not the size of political rallies.
Because Americans should be better off than they were four years ago, and we should be better off four years from November than we are today. Given the debate, I’m worried we won’t be.
