It's the incompetence, stupid

The most telling exchange of the second 2016 presidential debate came in the midst of an extended exchange over tax policy, about an hour of the way into the debate:

CLINTON: Well, here we go again. I've been in favor of getting rid of carried interest for years, starting when I was a senator from New York. But that's not the point here.

TRUMP: Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you do it?

CLINTON: Because I was a senator with a Republican president. I will be the president.

TRUMP: You could have done it if you were an effective; if you were an effective senator, could you have done it. But you were not an effective senator.

RADDATZ: Please allow her to respond. She didn't interrupt you.

CLINTON: Under our Constitution, presidents have something called veto power.
This was a bizarre exchange. And not bizarre in the sense of the 2016 freak show focused on beauty queens and pussy grabbing and decades-old rape allegations. Bizarre in the sense that Trump, an actual major party nominee for president, appears to genuinely not understand why it is that Clinton, as a junior senator from New York, was not able to single-handedly overhaul the tax code.

Because Trump, it turns out, doesn’t really understand anything about how the American government or American public policy works. That the former host of The Apprentice isn’t really up to speed when it comes to the details of managing public affairs is a bit dull and unsurprising. But it deserves to be front and center in a campaign in 2016.

Above and beyond the wilder and more outrageous sides of Donald Trump’s history and persona is the simple fact that he has no idea what he’s talking about. You wouldn’t ask Barack Obama to pilot a submarine — he has no idea how — and Donald Trump has no more business piloting the ship of state.