Clinton outshines Trump, but needs knockout

The biggest asset GOP nominee Donald Trump brings to the presidential race is not his alleged business acumen — which more and more looks like an elaborate con — but his showmanship. So it was a bit surprising to watch Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton consistently skewer and dominate the reality-TV star in last night’s debate.

{mosads}The confrontation mostly confirmed what we already knew about the two candidates, but it was the first opportunity to see them perform side-by-side — and Trump suffered from the comparison. Clinton was poised, confident and briskly in command of the facts; Trump blustered repetitively, was easily put on the defensive and his free-association ranting — such as his Sid Blumenthal excursion — was often too scatterbrained for anyone but political junkies to follow.

The juxtaposition highlighted once more that Trump hasn’t bothered to bone-up on the complex and knotty issues he’d confront as president. The White House is no place for winging it, yet he appears to lack the mental discipline to prepare himself to succeed in world’s toughest job. Are U.S. voters really so desperate for change that they would entrust a rank amateur like Trump with their highest office? This is the crux of the choice voters face in November.

Clinton did an effective job last night of raising doubts about the preening billionaire’s bona fides as a tribune of the working class. And she goaded him into proving her point that his volatile, lashing-out temperament is exactly what we don’t want in our next president.

But Clinton could have done a better job of picking apart the rationale for Trump’s candidacy. From the opening bell, Trump offered a strikingly bleak and even paranoid view of life in America. Our economy is a “disaster”; the Chinese and other countries are stealing our jobs; our freeloading allies are not paying us enough to defend them; our political leaders are uniformly incompetent and corrupt; law and order have broken down in our communities; criminal gangs of illegal aliens roam our streets; black and Hispanic Americans are mired in poverty and hopelessness; and, thanks to our bumbling leaders, Iran is stronger than ever and the the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threat is metastasizing around the world.

In the next debate, Clinton should rebut Trump’s over-the-top pessimism. That also gives her a chance to stoutly defend the best of President Obama’s achievements, and show how she’d build on them. In presidential elections, Americans almost always lean toward candidates who offer hopeful visions for the future, not those who claim the nation is going to hell in a handcart. Trump traffics in fear and exaggerates the nation’s problems to justify the most radical remedy imaginable — namely, himself. This is profoundly undemocratic — a contemporary version of the Führerprinzip — and Clinton shouldn’t let him get away with it.

Last night, she clearly won the debate on points. Next time, she should go for the knockout by challenging Trump’s hyperbolic depiction of America as a basket case only he can save.

Marshall is president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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