How did we get here?

Did everyone have a chance to watch the televised decline of western civilization on Tuesday night? If you aren’t one of the estimated 72 million people who watched the presidential debate, I’m sure you have heard about it.

President Trump, former Vice President Biden, and Fox News anchor Chris Wallace put on a show that reminded me of one that I would watch on Saturday mornings as a child. I’m not entirely sure which ones would play the part of Larry or Curly, but Trump was definitely Moe.

The spectacle was so shameful that the Commission on Presidential Debates is considering giving moderators the ability to turn off microphones and are reportedly going to do so without any negotiations with the campaigns. That move brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous “I paid for this microphone” moment from the 1980 primary, but those years were gentle by today’s standards.

For those of you who wonder how the American Presidency ever came to this new low, it started shortly after the dawn of the twenty-first century with a loose-knit movement calling itself the “Tea Party.” The Tea Party started out honorably enough. They believed in having lower taxes and a more simple tax code. That’s OK with me any day. Then they hopped on board with Libertarian-Republican Ron Paul’s presidential bid and in doing so, added a more strict adherence to the constitution and a few monetary measures to their cannon. Still great with me, but there was an undercurrent of distrust with moderate Republican John McCain, which may or may not have contributed to the election of Barack Obama.

OK. So my guy didn’t win that one, but I was a good sport about it. I was genuinely proud that we were able to elect a minority candidate in this country, which would have been unthinkable in my youth. Besides, there was supposed to be all of that hope and change stuff.

So four years later, having had my fill of hope and change, I was ready to retire Mr. Obama. Although I was personally a Newt Gingrich guy, the Republicans chose Mitt Romney as the nominee. OK. Close enough, but Mitt was complicated. Although we think of him as a super clean-cut guy from Utah, he had actually been the Governor of liberal Massachusetts. I was once told that a Massachusetts Republican and a Nebraska Democrat were roughly the same animal, and in Mitt’s case, it was true. In order to transition from Massachusetts to the national stage, he had to move to the right, but it struck many folks as being disingenuous. He failed to excite the Tea Party among other conservative factions, and we had four more years of hope and change.

I don’t recall exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way, the Tea Party was struck with a mass hysteria that rivalled the War of the World broadcast and the Salem witch trials. The best qualified political candidate, the Tea Party concluded, is someone who has no political experience whatsoever. “Not a politician” became a badge of honour. Well friends, the chickens have come home to roost. This is what we get.

I paid careful attention to the 2016 primaries and kept copious notes during the two-tiered debates. As I recall, I ranked Mr. Trump at #14 or #15 out of the 17 candidates, yet it would seem that he won. Once again, not my guy, but we move forward.

Flash forward to Tuesday. Kindly Uncle Joe Biden, swamp creature that he is, may have lowered himself into the fray smirking, calling the president a clown and telling him to “shut up,” but make no mistake, President Trump set the tone for the fracas. Chris Wallace, son of the sainted Mike Wallace of 60-minutes fame, just added to the cacophony. Further, some of his questioning did seem biased. It didn’t seem to me that the tough questions were evenly distributed. That, in addition to the amount of time he spent (appropriately) shushing the President, left many on the right with the impression that it wasn’t a fair fight to begin with, which further erodes the confidence in the debate process.

One more note: in the weeks leading up to the debate, a select number of right-wing pundits (by no means all) were alleging that Mr. Biden was suffering from severe dementia and that he would be unable to speak without a prompter. Some even speculated that Kamala Harris would be offered as a last-minute stand-in. Did he seem OK to you? His delivery wasn’t always perfect, but he wasn’t in a catatonic stupor as we were told by some to expect.

Polling indicates that the debate changed few minds, except to sadden everyone in the process in general. I would have to include myself in that number. At election time, I will be obliged to support the second amendment and economic issues, but rest assured, my vote will not be based on hero worship.