Amerikanerne går i aften glip af en duel på argumenter og personlighed
Americans want face-to-face action
The Americans missed a duel on arguments and personality as Trump would not participate in a virtual TV debate with Biden. Instead, it turned into two separate meetings.
Tonight, the second of a total of three planned presidential candidate debates should have taken place. The format was town hall style where citizens could ask questions to Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump.
After Trump was diagnosed with Corona, the debate committee changed the format and decided that it should take place in such a way that Biden and Trump should debate behind computer screens and thus not be directly confronted with each other or stand in front of an audience.
Very quickly, Trump announced that it would be a waste of his time and that he did not intend to participate. Precisely the assembly house debate format does not work well for Trump because he is not able to relate empathetically to ordinary people’s problems, so I wonder if he was inwardly relieved that he should not stand next to Joe Biden, who if anyone knows to the stumbling blocks that life lays out for one?
If, in a debate in front of ordinary people, Trump were to be confronted directly with Biden, the contrast in human relations with other people would be immensely clear.
Instead of the planned debate between Biden and Trump, the American people can now look forward to having to check out two different TV channels. Both candidates have been allotted 90 minutes and perform separately in the town hall style they were originally intended to have attended together. They are not going to relate to each other and each other’s answers to questions from the audience in the hall. There will be two different audiences giving feedback to the candidates.
After all, part of the essence of an assembly house debate is precisely the reaction from the audience when the candidates answer or do not answer questions. The basis of comparison is largely non-existent, if one does not just take into account their different personalities.
Americans want action face to face
I’m not going to sit in front of the screen to see either of the two dueling candidates, and that’s how I think many Americans feel. The point of having different kinds of debates is partly to see how they relate to each other’s answers and whose arguments are strongest.
Many Americans are looking forward to these presidential candidate debates. Many do not follow politics on a daily basis and decide which candidate should have their vote based on how the candidates fare in the duel debates leading up to the election.
Americans are a sports-loving people. They sit in front of the screen and follow the debates as if it were a boxing match. That is part of the appeal for many. Which candidate can get the best rhetorical blows in? Who can knock out his opponent with his words? That’s not going to happen tonight.
Joe Biden will be the pragmatic, empathetic and boring candidate when he stands in front of his audience tonight. Trump becomes the exact opposite as he rattles things off in the East and West, insulting existing and non-existent opponents.
Unfortunately, we will not see the opposites meet face to face either in real life or behind their own screens in a duel of words and arguments – and that is a shame. For Joe Biden, who tonight’s debate format would have been a gift to, but mostly for the American people.
(Google translate)
Danish-American Eyes on Society 