Former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event in front of the U.S.-Mexico border on Aug 22, in Sierra Vista, Ariz.Rick Scuteri/The Associated Press
It turns out that the key to understanding why the two American presidential campaigns have sparred for two days over whether to permit the candidates to interrupt each other during the next presidential debate is best expressed in an insight from an English prelate who died more than six centuries ago.
It was William of Wykeham, the bishop of Winchester and the chancellor of England, who anticipated the current debate about next month’s proposed debate – an argument Donald Trump said in a social-media post had been resolved Monday afternoon when both sides agreed to closed microphones that won’t permit interruptions. (Kamala Harris’s campaign had not yet confirmed this by Tuesday evening.)
William, who died in 1404, said that “manners maketh man.”
That aphorism applies to the latest dispute between the campaigns of Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris, for at the heart of that dispute is this question: Is Mr. Trump too rude?
“Partisans are going to be partisan, so Republicans think Trump is patriotic, tough and bold, and Harris is phony, radical and weak,” said Douglas Rivers, a Stanford professor who runs the YouGov Poll. “Democrats think Trump is reckless, old, rude, phony and weird, and Harris is smart, compassionate, sincere and honest.”
“But,” he continued, “the only thing a majority can agree on is that Trump is rude.”
Even 23 per cent of Republicans think this, according to the YouGov Poll.
Mr. Trump’s June debate with President Joe Biden had closed microphones – a condition proposed by Mr. Biden’s campaign and accepted by Mr. Trump’s.
For the planned Sept. 10 debate against Ms. Harris, a closed microphone was the preference of some of Mr. Trump’s aides, who are apparently concerned that his interventions could diminish their candidate. Mr. Trump, who apparently can’t help himself and clearly doesn’t want to, said he preferred that the microphones be open. His aides finally won that argument.
Ms. Harris’s team, calculating that every time an older white man interrupts a younger Black woman it undermines his dignity more than hers, clearly wanted to allow Mr. Trump to display his irrepressible impulse. They hoped their candidate could provoke Mr. Trump into an unseemly eruption.
The former president luxuriates in interrupting debate partners. That was his disruptive tactic in his 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, one he reapplied to great criticism in his confrontation with Joe Biden in 2020.
In this week’s negotiations, top members of the Harris camp recalled how deftly Ms. Harris handled Mike Pence in the 2020 vice-presidential debate. The episode occurred when she was speaking and Mr. Pence, ordinarily the very portrait of deference toward women, broke into her comments. She retorted, to great effect: “I’m speaking.”
Earlier this month, when pro-Palestinian protesters sought to disrupt Ms. Harris’s appearance in Detroit by chanting “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide,” she calmly told them, “I’m here because we believe in democracy. Everyone’s voice matters. But I am speaking now.”
Along with the interruption contention, there was the question of the host of the forum. Mr. Trump agreed to the ABC television network, then seemed to back away, then agreed again, and in the past two days again made noises about withdrawing.
The latest argument was prompted by a public dispute with the network’s chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl, who Mr. Trump first encountered 30 years ago when Mr. Karl interviewed the real estate mogul about Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson’s honeymoon at Trump Tower.
This week, before he relented and agreed that ABC could remain the host, Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an attack on both the correspondent and the network. “I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” he said.
But the key to the debate discussions was Mr. Trump’s reputation for having bad manners, which he has cultivated over decades in the public eye and burnished in the nine years in which he has been prominent in American politics. It is a view not confined to his opponents.
When YouGov asked independent voters whether each of the candidates was “likeable,” 29 per cent said they like Mr. Trump a lot or somewhat, while 55 per cent said they disliked him a lot or somewhat. More than a majority of Democrats like Ms. Harris a lot, as compared with two in five Republicans who like Mr. Trump a lot.
Political scientists disagree about the importance of the “likeability” factor, but in the 2012 election, polls showed that Democratic president Barack Obama was “more likeable” than his GOP rival, Mitt Romney. Mr. Obama prevailed by four percentage points.