About those debates

In an article Wednesday in Politico about the three moderators, Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace, Wallace boasted, “The reason all three of us were chosen is that we’re three of the toughest, hardest hitting interviewers in the business.” Rigggggght.I must have missed the part where they asked Governor Scott Walker about the fact that the day before the debate, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that he had almost certainly lied when he said it was “100 percent wrong” to say he had been targeted in a corruption probe in 2011; that the federal investigator in fact had written at that time, “I submit that there is probable cause to believe that Scott Walker … committed a felony, i.e., Misconduct in Public Office”; and that it is impossible that Walker did not know he was being investigated.

I did, however, learn the following things:

• That if you line up 10 Republican presidential candidates in a row, your initial visual impression is of a line of riot police in a place like Ferguson, Missouri, only with better ties.

• That lesser Republican candidates love brains more than zombies in a George Romero movie. (Carson, shrugging off his ignorance: the “most important thing is having a brain.” Trump: “we need brains in this country to turn it around.”)

• That Ben Carson doesn’t know the political parties in Israel, doesn’t know who’s in NATO, and thought Alan Greenspan had been Treasury Secretary, not head of the Federal Reserve–but also when it comes to poise, confidence, and verbal intelligence, hell, he sounds the most presidential of the bunch.

• That because this election is “about the future, not the past,” Marco Rubio deserves to win because of his mastery of Thomas Friedman insights that were stale in 1998. (“Did you know the largest retailer in the country and the world today, Amazon, doesn’t even own a single store?”)

• That the existence of previous Bushes in the White House is irrelevant to Jeb Bush because: “In Florida, they called me ‘Jeb’ because I earned it!” and “Veto Corleone, because I vetoed 2,500 separate line-items in the budget. (APPLAUSE).”

• That speaking of Bushes, if you come from an aristocratic WASP family and are groomed for power since birth, quietly confident, dripping rectitude, prone to yaddayadda-ing about stuff like “net effect” and “driver for high sustained economic growth” and “robust accountability”–well, you’re at a damned disadvantage in debates staged in gaping basketball arenas crowned by Jumbotrons. Being the also-ran idiot younger brother, tutored in lobbing spitballs by a childhood of resentful rage, is much better training for Fox.

• That the sort of audiences who flock to debates in basketball arenas–gladiatorial arenas–really, really like it when their would-be leaders call women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.” And like it even better when one of them threatens a woman: “What I say is what I say,” says Trump. (Like a Zen master. If the Zen master were an jackass.) And: “Honestly, Megyn, if you don’t’ like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be (APPLAUSE).”

• Ted Cruz is auditioning for Mt. Rushmore.

• Presidents, if their names are “Huckabee,” would have unilateral power to decide both constitutional doctrine and scientific fact by fiat. (“I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth and Fourteen Amendments to the Constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception.”

• That governors are heroes when they don’t break the law–because breaking the law is what you do when you don’t balance a state budget. As governor, Jeb Bush balanced “eight state budgets” (as Florida law required).

• That Donald Trump (Fox screen chryon: “133rd RICHEST MAN IN AMERICA”) is guilty of bribery, and is proud of the fact. “I gave to many people before this,” Trump said. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later … I call the. They’re there for me.”

Speaking of Trump–speaking of Trump was just about all the moderators and candidates did, both implicitly and explicitly, ever since the first questioner asked the candidates to raise their hand if they wouldn’t pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee. Trump raised his hand to boos, smirked in response, and explained, “I cannot say I have to respect the person that–if it’s not me–that wins.”

Trumpism in a nutshell.