I’ve watched a lot of U.S. presidential debates over the years. Tuesday night’s, however, was a bigger Schitt show than last week’s Emmy awards.
It was one of the first times I was glad to be live Tweeting because it meant I could take my eyes off the screen.
Usually you’re looking for a knock out punch, like when Sen. Lloyd Bentsen turned to Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice-presidential debates and said, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
This 2020 encounter was more like a kick in the groin, over and over again. In heels.
The lowest of many low moments for me was when Biden was talking about his son “Beau,” a lawyer and soldier and politician who died age 46 of brain cancer. Biden was making the point that his son’s tour of duty in Iraq made him a patriot, not a loser or a sucker as Trump recently insinuated of others who fought for America.
“I don’t know Beau… are you talking about Hunter?” Trump callously interrupted (as he did throughout the debate).
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Then Trump actually went on to blab that Biden’s other son, “got thrown out of the military,” stating, for “cocaine use” and piled on with his usual winge about Hunter making “a fortune in the Ukraine.” He wasn’t through, adding that Hunter didn’t have a job until Biden senior stepped in and gave him one.
Had Biden lost it then and there, violated social distance rules, crossed the stage and ripped Trump’s lungs out, not even nine Mitch McConnell-backed Supreme Court judicial appointees would have convicted him.
Instead he held it together, clutched the podium, looked at the camera and told millions watching that his son, like a lot of Americans, had a drug problem, “and he beat it.”
I’m a Canadian and can’t, of course, vote in an American presidential election, not even if I got mailed a thousand unrequested ballots.
But please, America, you’re better than this. Put an end to this madness. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.
