Is debate Hillary’s to lose?

By Jay Ambrose

Tribune News Service

Maybe, in tonight’s nationally televised debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, he will say something that infuriates her, causing her to crazily spout a sentence backwards, put her thumb on her nose, wiggle her fingers and then spit on his golden hair.

Short of all that, the victory ought to be hers tonight, and we all know who is most likely to do something foolish.

That’s Trump, the guy who once indulged in genital braggadocio in a primary debate. On top of that, she is knowledgeable about affairs of state and he’s not. He once said, for instance, that he learns about military issues from experts on TV. Clinton is articulate. Without a teleprompter, Trump’s words can get lost in a maze.

Of course, it’s not trained judges who determine winners and losers by looking at logic accompanied by evidence with eloquence thrown in.

Instead, it’s the people out there. Some may do their testing by tracking which candidate’s views coincide with their own. Perhaps, with hand on chin, others will be engaged in pop psych analysis. There will be those who look at Clinton and see an avalanche of ruinous leftism headed our way and others who will look at Trump and see an earthquake of stupidities.

Whatever, the usual Trump will likely have to do a disappearing act for the candidate to have a chance. What worked in the primary debates won’t work this time out.

Something different

For one thing, it will be a one-on-one match, meaning Trump can’t just shut up and look the other direction when he is ignorant about a subject. If he tries to bully Clinton the way he bullied Jeb Bush, as one example, he will look like the sexist from Hell. Virtually all of his opponents in these multi-person get-togethers were much better debaters than Mr. Ballyhoo, especially Sen. Marco Rubio, but it did not matter so much because the primary voters represented people especially anxious for a revamped status quo. Trump represented something different, to say the least.

Trump did have one splendid moment in those debates, namely when he took on Sen. Ted Cruz for his disgust with “New York values.” He had reason, emotion and ethics on his side as he reminded Cruz of the city’s noble reaction to the 9/11 attacks. To come across that way in his debate with Clinton, he will have to exercise perfect self- control and be prepared in all sorts of ways, from thinking through workable tactics to having persuasive answers to difficult questions.

For him to get there, he will have to have listened carefully to his best advisers – and he does have some good ones – and he will have to have practiced and he will have to have studied. It will help as well if the moderators in this first debate and those that follow know what the job is – to ask broad questions about important issues and not to intervene except in regards to time restraints.

What they should absolutely not do is imitate Candy Crowley of CNN when she entered a debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney with a fact-check perhaps affecting an election outcome.

This debate is not just politics. It is showbiz. It could put past Super Bowls to shame in the TV ratings it will get. Some think it will decide the election, at least when combined with the other two debates. That’s not entirely wonderful – the format should really be just the candidates coming up with their own topics, and the best debaters aren’t necessarily the best presidents, anyway.

Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.