Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris participate during an ABC News presidential debate at the National Constitution Center, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
Pow! “A bunch of lies, grievances and name calling.” Boom! An economy that is “a disaster for people.” Zap! “You’re a disgrace.” Bang! “She’s destroying this country.”
He said. She said. For more than 90 minutes in a Philadelphia museum, former president Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris engaged in the thrust and parry of a brutal debate, for the White House and, if the claims of both sides are to be taken seriously, with the survival of American democracy in the balance.
Following are several of the vital questions that the debate was intended to explore. Of course, left unaddressed is the biggest question of the evening and, indeed, of the entire campaign: Is this – a gabfest that disintegrated into a gong show – the best way for a mature democracy to set out its political choices?
Did Ms. Harris break with President Joe Biden?
She skirted a direct question about whether the country’s economy was better off under Mr. Biden than under Mr. Trump, emphasizing her tax policies rather than specifying whether she disagreed with the President’s policies on inflation. Mr. Trump said that “she has no policies,” even though he said her policies were “insane” and charged that “she’s a Marxist.” Ms. Harris said: “You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me.”
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Did Mr. Trump behave?
At the start, Mr. Trump projected calm, though he glowered all through the debate, occasionally smirking at Ms. Harris as she spoke, sometimes contorting his face in contempt, and he swiftly grew more fiery. He said of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, “He is really out of it.” He boasted throughout and claimed that the criminal charges that he faced were ginned up by Democrats. He said that he “probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they said about me,” even though the would-be assassin in the Butler, Pa., incident, Thomas Crooks, had no apparent ideology.
Which candidate seemed more “presidential”?
Ms. Harris stretched out her hand to Mr. Trump at the start of the session, a gesture of gentility in a season of conflict and contention. She seemed slightly rattled, even tentative, at the beginning of the debate, but grew in self-assurance as the evening progressed. Mr. Trump presented his customary confidence, though his rhetoric was punctuated with exaggerations if not outright falsehoods.
With few exceptions – Herbert Hoover deriding President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is perhaps the only modern example – presidents have refrained from speaking harshly about their successors. Mr. Trump said of Mr. Biden as the president when Ms. Harris was the vice-president: “If you call him a boss, he spends almost all his time on a beach” and said that Mr. Biden – ”a weak, pathetic man” – needed to be awakened at 4 in the afternoon.
Did either say something that might have changed anyone’s viewpoint?
Probably not. What might change voters’ minds was the comportment of the two candidates. The gamble for Ms. Harris was to laugh at some of Mr. Trump’s more extreme remarks – time will tell whether that showed her as human and warm, or frivolous and too lighthearted. The gamble for Mr. Trump was to show anger and irritability, with remarks such as, “They’ve destroyed the fabric of our country.”
Did the needle move one way or another?
Ms. Harris hammered hard on abortion, perhaps blunting any effort on Mr. Trump’s part to close the gender gap for women. “Donald Trump certainly should not be telling women what to do with their bodies,” she said. Mr. Trump responded with “There’s she goes again,” a phrase borrowed from Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debate with President Jimmy Carter.
Five key takeaways from Tuesday’s U.S. presidential debate
“She baited Trump into meandering into all of his anger,” said Jeffrey Bloodworth, a political historian and expert on contemporary American liberalism at Gannon University, in Erie, Pa. “He showed the strength his base wants. The question is whether that 45 per cent is enough.”
What element of the debate will be the most memorable?
Perhaps Ms. Harris’s riposte after Mr. Trump spoke of the crimes he said were being committed by those who have entered the United States illegally. “This is so rich coming from someone who has been prosecuted,” she said, and then she named the charges he faces. Later, she spoke of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and said, “The President of the United States incited a violent mob.”
Or perhaps it was a Trump riff about how Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban supported his re-election, or Mr. Trump’s characterization of the relationship between the President and the Vice-President, “He hates her. He can’t stand her.” Later in the debate, he said that Ms. Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, “hates Israel.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to state that, with few exceptions, presidents have refrained from speaking harshly of their successors.