My profession has lots of rules. Spelling rules, grammar rules, usage rules. People quoted in stories ought to both actually exist and have said the words attributed to them. Were I to tuck in a sentence like, “‘I think the mayor is a fumbling stumblebum,’ said John Q. Chicagoan, relaxing in the bleachers at Comiskey Park ...” my boss would be on me like a ton of bricks.
Writing authoritatively about events that have not yet occurred is also frowned upon. The ideal way to comment on Thursday night’s debate between President Joe Biden and former president and, oh, dear God, perhaps future President Donald Trump would be to watch it and then craft my opinion on the fly while it is happening.
But that’s problematic, too. The debate began at 8 p.m. and lasted 90 minutes. I might have spent this column discussing an exchange in the first hour when, five minutes before the end, CNN producers will have had to pry the candidates’ fingers off each other’s throats. That would look stupid, or worse. I remember a colleague who lost her job after reviewing a concert she left early, remarking on songs that were never performed.
Besides, I know of one thing that definitely, 100%, take-it-to-the bank was going to happen Thursday night. Or, to be more precise, not happen.
OK, again, lots of things might not have happened. The whole debate might not have come off at all. Trump might not have shown up — people kept saying that, citing his proven track record of cowardice. After protesters scuppered a Chicago campaign appearance in 2016, Trump never showed his face at a public event in Chicago again and certainly never will. A distinction that should be added to the city seal, perhaps replacing the naked baby on a clam shell.
Or the debate could have been incomplete. The TV lights could have melted Biden like a wax figurine under a blowtorch. He could have crumbled to dust and been blown away on the hot gale of Trump’s nonstop jabbering. Anything is possible.
But of the range of possibilities, there is one thing I was 100% certain wasn’t going happen, even though it is tucked into the very name of the event under consideration: the first 2024 presidential debate. I’ll give you a hint. It is certainly presidential — one current and one former president was there. But the presidential debate wasn’t a debate. Did anybody expect otherwise?
Did you tune in, expecting the presentation of arguments? The marshaling of relevant facts? One candidate shrugs off the very idea of factuality, living in a constantly changing fantasy hall of mirrors that millions and millions of Americans are all too glad to wander alongside him in, docile as lambs.
Think of all the problems facing our nation — the economy, illegal immigration, climate change, crime, guns, racial disparity, abortion, China, the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza. And those are just the top 10 off the top of my head. There are many more issues where the question, “What to do?” would not be easy to answer, even if intelligent people of good will could agree on what an ideal solution would look like. And we do not agree. Not close.
How many minutes of actual debate on these matters did we get Thursday night? Ten? Five? None? Buzzwords and insults. Zingers and punch lines. The buildup in the press, which is woefully culpable at this point, focused almost entirely on the possibilities that the supposed debate will be won or lost by one participant staring off into space for 10 seconds, or tripping on a step. We are told Biden will win if he is lucid, and Trump if he doesn’t start ranting about sharks and batteries.
The only comfort is that this is nothing new. Right here in Chicago 64 years ago, John F. Kennedy was cooler, classier and more smoothly shaved than Richard M. Nixon. He didn’t outargue him. Everyone agreed Kennedy won.
So it’s incorrect to say that Americans have become a small, shallow, petty, aggrieved people. More accurately, we always were and now are being reminded.
One candidate who could not yield gracefully to the next generation. The other who has never had a graceful moment in his life, a whining, complaining, deceitful, babbling baby.
I expected to watch the carnival Thursday night through latticed fingers, fighting the pit-of-the-stomach feeling that, whatever happens, we’ve already lost — the inescapable feeling that not only can’t we fix our problems, we can’t even talk about them.
