Ask Americans about when the great tradition of nationally
televised presidential debates began, and many will be able to point to the
famous Kennedy v. Nixon encounters of 1960… thereby creating the impression
that these encounters have been a staple of every campaign since. This is most
decidedly untrue. Lyndon Johnson, riding one of the great waves of presidential
popularity in 1964, simply refused to share a stage with Barry Goldwater. Nixon
himself – after being out-cooled by Kennedy in 1960 – ducked invitations to
debate in 1968 and 1972. Only when Gerald Ford encountered Jimmy Carter in 1976
did the tradition take hold.
In the past, you see, ducking a debate was not simply the
prerogative of the front-runner; it was accepted as the correct strategic move.
Why give your trailing opponent a clear and very public shot to take you down?
Why, you can practically hear Donald Trump saying, “that is sooooo stupid!!”
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So Donald Trump made the calculated bet that if he stood at
the center of the stage in Des Moines on Monday night, seven desperate
politicians would launch 100% of their Cruz missiles, Carson drones, and Bush
whacks directly at him in a frenzied, frantic, last-ditch effort to take him
down before Monday. Because it is becoming increasingly clear that if he takes
Iowa, he can easily run the table and lock up the nomination in a matter of
weeks.
America, please stop underestimating this guy. Trump’s
no-show may have been his shrewdest play yet.
Let’s break this down into two discreet components: that he did it, and how he did it. The “how” is actually the best part.
If he had stood up two weeks ago and said, “you know, I see
no strategic advantage to attending the final Iowa debate,” he would have
risked being breaded and dumped in oil; just one more Iowa corn dog or chicken
fried steak tossed on the picnic table for other candidates to devour. Imagine
the feeding frenzy of testosterone-supplemented second tier candidates
questioning his manhood.
No, the art of this deal was to create a credible
misdirect. Donald Trump made the issue the journalistic objectivity of Fox
News, which – aside from being world’s biggest kettle ever to call a pot black
– created one of the cleverest “heads, I win; tails, you lose” of all time. He
told Fox News that they had to remove Megyn Kelly from the moderator’s table,
or he would walk
- If Fox caved in to this request, it would publicly validate that Trump is now far, far more powerful than Fox News.
- If Fox refused to capitulate, Trump would walk away from the debate… draining the viewership of the debate (this alone a great achievement for his campaign), and allowing him to claim that his rationale was based on a broader principle of journalistic fairness rather than simply ducking a debate in which he saw only downside.
In short, Trump won before the first question was asked.
But even he could not have imagined how perfectly the “One
No Trump” debate would unfold.
The seven candidates on the stage on Monday night were thereby
given the unbelievable opportunity to take two hours of completely uncontested
shots at Donald Trump. They had the golden moment to say every single nasty
thing they wanted to say to stop Trump from winning on Monday, with no risk of
rejoinder.
And not one candidate on the stage saw the priceless gift they had been given.
For months, these guys had sucked up to Trump,
terrified of taking him on face-to-face, mano-a-mano,
because they had witnessed him raise Jeb Bush’s voice by a couple of octaves
and they had watched him shoo Rand Paul as if he were a cocker spaniel.
So they all suddenly have the opportunity to launch full
broadsides at Trump, knowing that he is not even there to respond and will have
little chance to do so before the votes on Monday, and what do they all do? They rip into each other, and barely mention
Trump’s name.
Donald Trump could not have scripted this debate better if
it was the season finale of The Apprentice. Ted Cruz at the center podium
became the Piñata of the
Prairie, taking incoming from all quarters. Trump, in standing down, let the
other candidates do his dirty work of bloodying Cruz days before the
caucusing. And much as the other
candidates tried, nobody took him down quite as hard as the newly energized Fox
News.
Finally, six months into the debates, Fox News finally
learned the trick that Jon Stewart used for seventeen years: find old video
clips of candidates saying things that are graphic evidence of flip-flopping,
shape-shifting, and blatant bending of alleged principle. The clip crew at Fox showed a montage of a
younger Ted Cruz sounding very much the compromiser, very much the man eager to
pass the gang of eight immigration bill, and still every bit as smarmy as an
appeaser as he is in his role as purist. Cruz, in the face of video evidence, struggled
between defiance and tactical retreat, ultimately attempting to jargon his way
out, opting for the venial sin of “compromiser” rather to the mortal sin of
“flip-flopper.”
Cruz made another brazen debating error, at one point indignantly
noting that the “last four questions have been, Rand, attack Ted on this;
Chris, attack Ted on this…” The audience pounced on his self-pity as an audible
gust of disgust blew through the arena.
Fox News piled on. Chris Wallace seemed to unleash the full
fury of months of repressed resentment, barking at Cruz that he did not have
the right to a reply after another candidate had spoken. “Sir,” he spat out
contemptuously, “I know you like to argue about the rules, but we’re going to
conduct the debate.” Smack down.
It was not a good night for Ted, who had so mastered the
role of challenger that he flailed in his role as de facto leader. He chose a
very bad night to have what was by far his worst debate.
But the good Cruz news was that no one else really seemed
to definitively shine.
There will be those who give the evening to Marco Rubio,
who did manage to consume an outsized amount of the oxygen in the room. Rubio
has dumped the sunny disposition that once seemed to be central to his
appeal, and has sought to recast himself as the candidate who will be the most
extreme in defending the United States homeland from terrorism. Most troubling
were the repeated occasions in which he ominously used the word “Guantanamo” as
if to convey that he knew he couldn’t actually say “waterboarding” out loud.
Rubio was the other candidate that Fox News chose to star
in a series of “video gotcha” clips. The Rubio video montage showcased his
morphing role in the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, which he has allowed to
become a dead weight to his candidacy – not necessarily because of the
positions he espoused at the time so much as his utter terror of admitting that
his position has changed. Until he figures out how to talk truthfully,
sensibly, and clearly about immigration, every Republican debate is going to
have its “Gang of Eight” segment as surely as each so far has a predictable
“Break for Benghazi.”
Chris Christie may be prove to be (forgive me) the biggest loser come New Hampshire, but if
he is indeed voted off the island, I will miss his presence in the debates.
After watching Rubio and Cruz ineptly dance on the heads of immigration pins,
Christie turned to the audience and asked if they, too, wished they had a
“Washington to English Converter” to translate all the double-speak. Chris
Christie then patronizingly explained to Rubio that it is actually o.k. to
change your mind. It was a world-class diss.
The candidate who seemed most lost in Thursday’s debate was
Jeb Bush. Ironically, Jeb has been the candidate who has tried the hardest to
take down Donald Trump… yet given the wide open opportunity to rip Trump to
shreds with virtual impunity, Bush squandered the evening with pointless policy
parsing and lukewarm attacks on the other candidates. Dare I admit it, I have
actually come to like Jeb Bush over the course of the campaign, and one reason
is that you can really tell that he loathes the ugly business of ripping into
his competitors. One learns at Andover that this sort of thing ought to be done
discretely.
John Kasich showed spunk in Des Moines, though my hunch is
that he very intentionally spent his evening talking over the Iowans and on to
the televisions in the Granite State, where he, too, is locked in a battle for
survival among the four establishment candidates. Kasich spoke eloquently about
the ravaging of drug addiction, which was an issue in Iowa but a full-on
scourge in New Hampshire.
Rand Paul and Ben Carson, who have both been rumored to be
the recently discovered “ninth planet,” continued to orbit the debate space in
ever more distant trajectories. Carson – who once led in Iowa and who knows
that its Christian-values community makes it his best shot -- could well be
space junk by Monday night.
Who won the debate?
First, I’d like to give an honorable mention to Fox News.
Make no mistake: I generally loathe this network, and I believe that their
pioneering work in the field of fact-free journalism has done more to
contribute to the political polarization of our population than any hundred
right wing or left wing politicians combined. But on Thursday night, Fox was on
a mission. Clearly energized that their leaders did not back down to Trump,
they were zealous to prove that they really are hard-edged, tough, and
knowledgeable reporters. They did a good job.
But if you want to know who won last night, just ask your
favorite bridge player.
Because any bridge player knows that the hardest bid to
play is “No Trump.”
