DecryptionThe two candidates clashed in a debate in which the president defended his controversial handling of the Covid and attacked his opponent without shaking him.
The last presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump did not consecrate one but a winner, the moderator Kristen Welker. A little less than a month after the chaos caused during the first face-to-face meeting by the incessant interruptions of the outgoing president, which Chris Wallace, for all his experience, had been unable to contain, the NBC reporter imposed herself. like an efficient metronome. Donald Trump, who called her the day before “Hardened democratic leftist”, quickly realized the obvious. “I respect the way you handle this very much”, he agreed in the middle of the exchanges.
No doubt the decision of the Presidential Debates Committee to cut the candidates’ microphone when they were not invited to speak at the start of each dossier also played a role. In the end, the benefit of Kristen Welker’s skill and this weapon of deterrence went to American citizens. This time, they were able to hear two candidates who are almost entirely opposed to explain their ideas, their vision of the United States, but also their criticisms of their adversary, in an orderly, intelligible and even sometimes convincing manner.
Donald Trump will no doubt regret, in retrospect, not having adopted the same tactics on September 29. Energetic, after his contamination by SARS-CoV-2 three weeks ago, the outgoing president undoubtedly delivered one of the best performances of his brief political career. His most effective features were worn when he regularly pretended to be surprised that the former vice-president did not have the idea of ​​developing the programs he set out when he was in power, of 2009 to 2017.
Return to the controversies
“He has been in government for forty-seven years, he has never done anything”, “Only words, and no action!” “, he mocked, resuming the posture that had succeeded so well four years ago when he was an outsider in front of professional politicians. Joe Biden was slow to recall that “The Republican Congress” (the Chamber from 2011 then the Senate from 2015) was stubbornly opposed.
This posture of accuser is now more difficult to occupy after four years in the White House. Donald Trump has shown himself to his advantage to praise his successes with the hyperbole that always accompanies it, but he has been more concerned with attacking Joe Biden’s plans than with presenting his own for a new term.
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