{"id":95673,"date":"2020-09-30T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95673"},"modified":"2020-09-30T07:54:44","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T11:54:44","slug":"wsj-a-depressing-debate-spectacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95673","title":{"rendered":"(WSJ) A Depressing Debate Spectacle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p>The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless cross-talk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics. Our guess is that millions of Americans turned away after 30 minutes, and we would have turned away too if we didn\u2019t do this for a living.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Trump no doubt wanted to project strength and rattle Mr. Biden, but he did so by interrupting him so much that he wouldn\u2019t let Mr. Biden talk long enough even to make a mistake. The President bounced from subject to subject so frequently that it was hard to figure out what he hoped to say beyond that Joe Biden is controlled by the Democratic left. Even when moderator Chris Wallace asked a question that played to the strengths of his record\u2014such as on the economy\u2014Mr. Trump couldn\u2019t stick to the theme without leaping to attack Mr. Biden.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/a-depressing-debate-spectacle-11601439976\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A depressing spectacle: pro wrestlers are more presidential than Donald Trump or Joe Biden were Tuesday night. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/HHyxa83oH0\">https:\/\/t.co\/HHyxa83oH0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WSJopinion\/status\/1311168859383238657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 30, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=95673\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,168,616,151,584,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americau-s-a","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-office-of-the-president","category-politics-in-general","category-the-u-s-government","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95673"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95675,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95673\/revisions\/95675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}