Feeling nostalgic for polite politics

I couldn’t bring myself to watch much of that horrendous “presidential” “debate”. He seems so full of greed and hate it’s literally driven him insane. A show best left for others to endure.

“This is so unpresidential”: Notes from the worst debate in American history – The New Yorker
It was a joke, a mess, a disaster. A “shit show,” a “dumpster fire,” a national humiliation. No matter how bad you thought the debate would be, it was worse. Way worse. Trump shouted, he bullied, he hectored, he lied, and he interrupted, over and over again.

Chris Wallace struggled to rein In an unruly Trump at first debate – The New York Times
“The country would be better served if we allowed both people to speak with fewer interruptions,” Mr. Wallace said, directly asking Mr. Trump to yield a higher civic ideal. “I’m appealing to you, sir, to do it.” “And him, too?” the president replied defiantly, nodding at Mr. Biden. “Well, frankly, you’ve been doing more interrupting,” Mr. Wallace replied.

Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” after being asked to condemn white supremacists – BuzzFeed News
Trump’s comments are part of his campaign’s pattern of dog whistles and overt appeals to violent groups, white supremacists, and his most fervent supporters to take matters into their own hands and defend him and his divisive ideologies at all costs.

Trump’s closing debate argument was a blizzard of lies about mail voting – Vice
There’s overwhelming evidence and widespread agreement from voting experts that widespread voting fraud is extremely rare. But Trump has spent months attacking the process — while his lawyers fight in the courts to make sure that more mail voters will be disenfranchised by fighting any rule changes that would make their votes count.

CNN fact-checked the presidential debate. It was almost all about Trump’s lies. – Vox
The problem is not just that Trump lied a lot during the debate, or that he lies a lot in his public statements. It’s that Trump doesn’t seem to care at all for the truth. What he says is only meant to make him look good. And when the president repeats the sorts of lies he told Tuesday night, they begin to calcify, lingering despite fact-checks — making it perpetually difficult to say if he’s telling the truth or merely reciting self-serving bullshit.

But I enjoyed spending a little time watching a different debate from a more civilised, polite age. No, not the suave JFK/pasty Nixon one from 1960, but the one 20 years after that, with the first two US presidents I remember as a kid, Carter and Reagan.

Presidential Debate, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan – C-SPAN
This was the only presidential candidates debate with both major party candidates during the 1980 campaign. They responded to questions from a panel of journalists on issues including defense preparedness and the economy. The debate included remarks by President Jimmy Carter concerning the views of his daughter Amy on arms control, which were widely criticized following the debate.

It was interesting to see Reagan start as he meant to go on, with all that ‘Leader of the Free World’ stuff. It’s literally the first thing he talks about. Ah, those were the days.