At the Next Debate, How About a Little Civility?

By Matthew McMullan
Oct 05 2016 |
Best buds in the world Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face the moderator at their first debate. | Photo by Bill B

Please, please, please get to the issues!

After months of campaigning, the presidential election is only four weeks away. And both candidates remain deeply unpopular.

Nope. There isn’t a lot of enthusiasm for either of them out there, but last week’s parley between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Long Island still drew a record 84 million viewers.

This week at Washington University, they will again deliver the drama. Bet on it, man! Second Acts always do. The Godfather II. The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens.

Trump vs Clinton: Part II.

We’d be better off with something better suited to the calm, sonorous policy discussion on C-SPAN.

Call it wishful thinking in an age when zingers, rants, and raves are the currency of our presidential debates. But while Trump and Clinton paid cursory attention to real concerns – particularly those of the economic variety – they offered little in the way of plausible solutions before the bickering began.

That’s a real shame. The campaigns clearly know what voters want to hear. It’s no surprise, for example, that the section of the debate that earned Trump his highest marks was his out-of-the-gate indictment of American trade policy.

It was the very first thing out of his mouth that night, and that was absolutely by design.

“Thank you, Lester,” he began, acknowledging the referee. “Our jobs are fleeing the country. They’re going to Mexico."

The Donald is famously unrehearsed, but here he intentionally spoke to the poll-quantifiable worries of middle Americans, who read blurbs in the business section about import surges and overcapacity – or watch grim viral videos of layoff announcements – and see economic victims that look like their friends, neighbors, or themselves.

It’s remarkable that voters are listening to a billionaire real estate developer who demonstrably hasn’t made it in America when given the opportunity. All of his Trump-branded goods were made everywhere but the United States until he decided to run for president, and it looks like the steel in the real estate mogul's construction projects isn't, either.

But the interest in his candidacy speaks to the strength of this message.

Still, it can’t be enough to just know what voters want; you should be able to explain how you’ll do it. And maybe we’ll get lucky on Saturday in old Saint Lou.

The interest in Trump's candidacy speaks to the strength of his trade message.

Maybe we’ll hear what Trump actually means when he says he’ll rewrite trade agreements that have made it easier to offshore American production jobs.

Maybe we’ll hear Clinton, who’s no people’s champ herself, explain to a national audience how she really feels about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. She spent years of her life promoting as Secretary of State before denouncing it as a candidate.

She’s got an infrastructure investment plan worth $250 billion; maybe Clinton will make clear it will maintain the job-creating Buy America provisions that exist in current federal procurement policy. That would be a clear sign her commitment to American manufacturing is more than skin deep.

Trump has got an infrastructure plan of his own, twice as big at $500 billion, but he hasn’t explained how he’d pay for it. Maybe he’ll share particulars with the audience.

Will Trump propose a big debt increase, or seek a windfall from business tax reform? He says he knows the U.S. tax system better than anyone, and plans to cut the corporate tax rate by 20 percent. Okay, but maybe he’ll lay out some specifics, which would demonstrate he knows what it will take to keep factory jobs stateside.

Manufacturing activity is capital intensive, which means it often requires substantial borrowing and a long-term horizon for a return on investment. The existing tax code recognizes this through accelerated depreciation and other cost recovery mechanisms. Will Trump’s plan preserve them?

Will we hear any specifics? Or just quips?

Simply put: Will either of these jamokes ever get into the nitty gritty of policy before turning on each other?