Debate TV Round 2: This time it was personal
If you tuned in expecting to see a head or two explode, Sunday's debate might not have been quite the TV show the 48 hours that preceded it seemed to promise.
If you tuned in expecting to see a head or two explode, Sunday's debate might not have been quite the TV show the 48 hours that preceded it seemed to promise.
As if aware that their second debate was being promoted as an event parents might not want their children to see, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton seemed determined at the outset to use their inside voices.
It didn't last, of course, and while it did, it didn't make things any less ugly. If anything, the animosity between the two seemed even more pronounced.
Trump, who early on pivoted from once again describing the Access Hollywood video in which he had talked about grabbing women's genitals as "locker room talk" to promising to "knock the hell out of ISIS," at one point promised that if elected, he would seek a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton.
He complained, repeatedly, that the moderators, ABC News' Martha Raddatz and CNN's Anderson Cooper, were cutting him off while letting Clinton exceed her time.
In some cases, they were pressing him to answer a question. To Cooper went the dubious honor of asking a candidate for president if he had committed sexual assaults rather than just bragging that he had.
About 17 minutes in, Trump, who had earlier held a Facebook Live event with some of former President Bill Clinton's accusers, brought up his name, declaring, "There's never been anyone in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women."
At least twice, Trump's statements were met with applause in the hall at Washington University, where the audience had been asked to remain quiet.
The in-studio questioners, St. Louis-area voters who said they were not committed to a candidate, didn't get in that many questions, competing as they were with online questioners and Cooper and Raddatz.
A few things I noticed:
Naming names: As in the first debate, Clinton referred to Trump mostly as Donald. He made less of a point of the "Secretary Clinton" from the first debate, referring to her as Hillary.
Body language: When Clinton was answering questions, the cameras often showed Trump pacing the stage. When he talked, she moved less, but the practiced smile from the first debate was less evident.
Product placement: If anyone doesn't know by now that Trump has a project involving the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., it's not Trump's fault.
Clinton sound bite: "Our country is great because we are good."
Trump sound bite: "Carried interest." Not quite so catchy.
Out of sight, probably not out of mind: Paula Jones and the other women Trump had placed in the audience were not on camera on the feeds I saw.
Dead person who'd be most surprised to be mentioned in this debate: Abraham Lincoln, who was, according to Clinton, the president she was talking about when she opined in a speech that politicians might need to say one thing and believe another.
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