I Haven’t See It Yet, But Here’s What I Thought

I’m writing this some hours before the debate but setting it to post just as it concludes.

Did you watch?

How’d we do?

Ideally, Hillary was amazing, funny, and warm — as she is in real life.

Undoubtedly, Donald was grossly unprepared to lead the world — as he is in real life.

But if not?

If she seemed, say, to tire more than he?

We shouldn’t pick a president based on who can do the most push-ups.

If the pneumonia’s lingered, and she had a coughing spell?

Who cares?  If for some reason Hillary ever did have to step aside — which I certainly don’t expect (the woman is indomitable) — we’d still be in far steadier, more competent hands with Tim Kaine than Donald Trump.

If she wasn’t the candidate you’d prefer to have a beer with?

Is that how you’d choose a surgeon to operate on your child or a manager for your retirement fund?  Is the President’s job less consequential or complex?

George W. Bush would be great to have a beer with . . .

(Did I ever tell you about the time I met him?   “I think you knew my friend XXXXXXX at Yale?” I volunteered, referring to his classmate who’d been — or thought he’d been — a close chum. “Well,” Bush shot back with a grin, not wanting to hurt feelings — “was he drunk for four years? I might ‘a.”)

. . . but he was a horrible president, ignoring warnings about Bin Laden from the start . . . embarking on a disastrous war . . . turning an inherited budget surplus into tax cuts for the rich and a $1.5 trillion deficit . . . giving us the Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act and blew the lid off political contributions.

So the beer test is over-rated.

(And by the way?  Speaking of that disastrous war?  Hillary voted to authorize it, to give Bush the negotiating stick he sought, taking him at his word to use it only as “a last resort.” A stick I don’t believe for a minute she would have used in this circumstance had she been President — let alone purely on the strength of a lone intelligence source code-named Curveball.  Nor do I believe for a minute the agenda of her first National Security Council meeting, long before 9/11, would have been, as his was, invading Iraq.  So this notion that she “was for the war,” is a crock.)

Over-rated, also, it should be said: the question of “who won” the debate.  We’re not electing a debater, we’re electing a president.

As I write this, the debate has not taken place.

But however it went, Hillary should be our next President.

Click here to vote, here to volunteer, here to contribute — and here to see what Republicans are saying about Trump and Clinton.