My profession has lots of rules. Spelling rules, grammar rules, usage rules. People quoted in stories ought to both actually exist and have said the words attributed to them. Were I to tuck in a sentence like, “‘I think the mayor is a fumbling stumblebum,’ said John Q. Chicagoan, relaxing in the bleachers at Comiskey Park …” my boss would be on me like a ton of bricks.
Writing authoritatively about events that have not yet occurred is also frowned upon. The ideal way to comment on Thursday night’s debate between President Joe Biden and former president and, oh dear God, perhaps future president Donald Trump would be to watch it, and then craft my opinion on the fly while it is happening.
But that’s problematic too. The debate begins at 8 p.m. and lasts 90 minutes. I might spend the column discussing an exchange in the first hour when, five minutes before the end, CNN producers will have to pry the candidates’ fingers off each other’s throats. That would look stupid, or worse. I remember a colleague who lost her job after reviewing a concert she left early, remarking on songs that were never performed.
Besides, I know of one thing that definitely, 100%, take-it-to-the bank is going to happen Thursday night. Or, to be more precise, not happen.
OK, again, lot’s of things might not happen . The whole debate might not come off . Trump might not show up — people keep saying that, citing his proven track record of cowardice. After protesters scuppered a Chicago campaign appearance in 2016, Trump never showed his face at a public event in Chicago again and certainly never will. A distinction that should be added to the city seal, perhaps replacing the naked baby on a clam shell.
Or the debate might be incomplete. The TV lights could melt Biden like a wax figurine under a blowtorch. He could crumble to dust and blow away on the hot gale of Trump’s nonstop jabbering. Anything is possible.
But of the range of possibilities, there is one thing I am 100% certain won’t happen, even though it is tucked into the very name of the event under consideration: the first 2024 presidential debate. I’ll give you a hint. It is certainly presidential — one current and one former president will be there, probably. But the presidential debate will not be a debate. Does anybody expect otherwise?
Are you tuning in, expecting the presentation of arguments? The marshaling of relevant facts? One candidate shrugs off the very idea of factuality, living in a constantly changing fantasy hall of mirrors that millions and millions of Americans are all too glad to wander alongside him, docile as lambs.
Think of all the problems facing our nation — the economy, illegal immigration, climate change, crime, guns, racial disparity, abortion, China, the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza. And those are just the top 10 off the top of my head. There are many more issues where the question, “What to do?” would not be easy to answer, even if intelligent people of good will could agree on what an ideal solution would look like. And we do not agree. Not close.
How many minutes of actual debate on these matters will we get Thursday night? Ten? Five? None? Buzz words and insults. Zingers and punchlines. The build-up in the press, which is woefully culpable at this point, focused almost entirely on the possibilities that the supposed debate will be won or lost by one participant staring off into space for 10 seconds, or tripping on a step. We are told Biden will win if he is lucid, and Trump if he doesn’t start ranting about sharks and batteries.
The only comfort is that this is nothing new. Right here in Chicago 64 years ago, John F. Kennedy was cooler, classier and more smoothly shaved than Richard M. Nixon. He didn’t out-argue him. Everyone agreed Kennedy won.
So it’s incorrect to say that Americans have become a small, shallow, petty, aggrieved people. More accurately, we always were, and now are being reminded.
One candidate who could not yield gracefully to the next generation. The other never had a graceful moment in his life, a whining, complaining, deceitful, babbling baby.
I intended to watch the carnival Thursday night through latticed fingers, fighting the pit of the stomach feeling that, whatever happens, we’ve already lost — the inescapable feeling that not only can’t we fix our problems, we can’t even talk about them.