Presidential debate offers disappointment on all sides

The first live debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden aired Tuesday night. Pundits and polls spent much of Wednesday arguing who won and why.

I tuned in, like a lot of people in our area, to see what the candidates had to say about their policies after weeks of coverage in print, television and social media. What we got was a shouting match that offered little substance on clear agendas or promises.

One poll I saw Wednesday morning said that 87% of those responding found the debate negative overall. My question is, what were the other 13% of respondents watching? I’d like to have that channel saved for the next debate.

I doubt Tuesday offered much help for those people still on the fence about what to do Nov. 3.

My takeaways — Biden couldn’t answer questions about how he would treat the Supreme Court structure in the future, or what, if any, law enforcement groups support him. And, President Trump turned a question on racism into an argument over who has a stronger stance on crime and whether he or Biden has more endorsements, rather than having a conversation about a very problem in our country.

I reached out this morning to members of our local Republican and Democrat central committees to see what they thought of the debate. It turns out sometimes we can all agree on something.

Neither of them was happy with the lack of true debate either.

“My debate teacher in high school is probably apoplectic right now,” said Eddy Justice of the Butler County Republican Central Committee. “Debates are about structural and organized ways of informing the viewers. Last night was a spectacle to guarantee ratings and create a narrative. I would venture that not a single voter was swayed by that event.”

For Keith French, of the Butler County Democratic Central Committee, there were no examples to support President Trump’s ability to lead.

“Instead of offering a clear vision of what he seeks to do for the American people, he interrupted, lied and attacked Joe Biden,” French said. “When asked about health care he again promised ‘something better’ than Obamacare giving no plan whatsoever. A promise he’s been breaking since 2016. Joe Biden stood up to Trump’s circus act as well as any person could.”

In the future, French hopes to see Biden focus on his proposals to help people and “stand above the petty behavior of Trump.”

Trump and Biden have two more chances to get it right, Oct. 15 in a debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida, and Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

There also will be a vice presidential debate Oct. 7 at Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah.

It looks like some changes to the debate rules are on the horizon, so maybe we can learn more from those events.

The presidential debate commission said Wednesday the debate “made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”

One possibility being discussed is to give the moderator the ability to cut off the microphone of one of the debate participants while his opponent is talking, according to the Associated Press.

And, for those who did catch some of the rare moments of real discussion during the debate, here are just a couple of AP fact checks:

CRIME

BIDEN: “The fact of the matter is violent crime went down 17%, 15%, in our administration.”

THE FACTS: That’s overstating it. Overall, the number of violent crimes fell roughly 10% from 2008, the year before Biden took office as vice president, to 2016, his last full year in the office, according to data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. But, the number of violent crimes was spiking again during Obama and Biden’s final two years in office, increasing by 8% from 2014 to 2016. More people were slain across the U.S. in 2016, for example, than at any other point under the Obama administration.

HEALTH CARE

TRUMP: “Drug prices will be coming down 80 or 90%.”

THE FACTS: That’s a promise, not a reality. Trump has been unable to get legislation to lower drug prices through Congress. Major regulatory actions from his administration are still in the works and are likely to be challenged in court.

Looking back at the totality of Trump’s term, from January 2017, when he was inaugurated, to the latest data from August 2020, drug prices went up 3.6%, according to an analysis by economist Paul Hughes-Cromwick of Altarum, a nonprofit research and consulting organization. Hughes-Cromwick looked at figures from the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, which measures prices for a set of prescription medicines, including generics and branded drugs. When comparing prices in 2019 with a year earlier, there indeed was a decline.

Prices dropped by 0.2% in 2019, a turnabout not seen since the 1970s. But, that’s nowhere near close to 80% or 90%. From August of last year to this August, prices rose by 1.4%. Farley is the editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley.dar@gmail.com .