Watching the debate between President Trump and Vice President Harris last night, I thought back to Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968 (1969). It’s been a long time since I read it. My memory might be off. I might be thinking of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson.
As I recall, McGinniss drew on Marshall McLuhan to talk about television as a “cool” medium. You didn’t want to appear “hot” on the tube. It doesn’t come across well. It would be like a guest vomiting in the living room of your home.
Trump began cool last night, but Harris quickly triggered him. He turned hot — hot and angry. He stayed hot and angry to the end.
Trump presented as the self-parodying character who can’t let a gibe or an insult go. His rally crowds are the best. He won the 2020 election. Viktor Orban speaks highly of him. And so on, frequently speaking incoherently. Half the time, I thought no one who wasn’t a political obsessive would have any idea what he was talking about.
The two ABC News moderators might have triggered Trump all by themselves. They were absurdly partisan. They too excelled in the self-parody department.
Who will “fact-check” the fact-checkers? Forget muting the microphones. Any Republican who agrees to a debate in which the moderators are allowed to “fact-check” the candidates is out of his or her mind.
In McLuhan’s terms, Harris was cool. She was prepared. She was unruffled. She loves everybody. She lied at will with no let or hindrance. If you don’t think about it too hard, what’s not to like?
Harris pitched herself to voters who must know next to nothing about her, or know next to nothing, period. I can’t imagine any persuadable voters thinking that Trump won the debate in any sense, but how would the debate affect their thinking? They might not care.
Conditions are what they are. Harris tries to rewrite current events. You usually have to wait a few years to pull that off. She has no response, for example, to the tidal wave of illegal immigration that she invited and abets. We can hope that the debate doesn’t matter.
