The first observation may be biased by my own Presidential choice: Jo Jorgensen; obviously, I think that Jo, who represents a fiscally conservative small central government, pro-market, non-interventionist point of view in terms of economic and foreign policy, would have provided a necessary alternative policy perspective than the political duopoly and should have been invited to the debate.
The second observation was about moderator Chris Wallace, probably my favorite of Sunday talk soup moderators. I can't really blame him for Trump and Biden violating preestablished code of conduct agreements, both of them talking over, interrupting, and constantly insulting each other. They both were acting like juveniles in a sandbox trying to throw sand in each other's eyes. But some of his questions were frankly absurd. For one thing, Wallace at one point argued that Trump was deploying a free market policy. If I had been eating at that point, I would have choked on my meal. Seriously? "Tariff Man", "Mr. Anti-TPP", the guy who repeatedly bashes companies (Apple, Ford, Carrier, etc.) which don't do what he prefers, e.g., by shifting production out of the country? The same guy who is bashing Big Pharma and pushing pharmaceutical drug imports, drawing from a favorite Dem proposal from at least 15 years back? On the latter point, a real free market proponent would be criticizing the FDA approval monopoly, lowering barriers of entry, reciprocal drug approval arrangements, etc. Jo was missing from the discussion.
Second, Wallace brings up the protests, riots, and lootings. This gives Trump a chance to hype his unconstitutional national police, which he credits with intimidating violent leftists in Seattle and other cities, and he spent a lot of time pushing his endorsements from innumerable police unions and law and order officials and baiting Biden to list any endorsing him. At the same time he's constantly trying to divide and conquer Biden's leftist allies, pointing out, for instance, Biden's hawkish crime bills had exacerbated incarceration of urban minority youths/young men. This is rich coming from a man whose own attorney generals have fully prosecuted the failed War on Drugs, opposing state drug decriminalization. But more to the point, other than incidental attacks on federal property, Trump's goons have no constitutional authority, because by the Tenth Amendment, police powers are restricted to the state and local authorities. So what exactly was Wallace's point, unless he was suggesting that state and local authorities were violating civil rights of protestors, say, in the deaths of George Floyd and others? It's not like the POTUS has a chain of command to local police commissioners, and federal law restricts the use of military troops for domestic law and order purposes. In other context, he served up a softball to Joe Biden, pointing out Trump's morally ambiguous "there are good people on both sides" in response to the Charlottesville tragedy.
A third observation was I think this was Trump's best debate performance I've personally seen (which is not saying much), even ignoring Trump's typical unprofessional behavior of interruptions and insults; on my scorecard, Trump won on points, although this mostly had to due with Biden's poor debate performance, his overreliance on dubious talking points and abysmal economic illiteracy which I'll discuss in more detail below. I give Biden credit for not letting Trump define him, e.g., on the Green New Deal, where Biden forcefully said that he was running on his own energy proposal, not some party platform; Trump basically responded with a childish taunt that Biden was alienating his leftist allies like AOC, Comrade Bernie, and Cherokee Lizzie.
A fourth observation, though, was that I thought Biden won from a standpoint of political strategy. For a long time, Trump's campaign has been pushing the theme that Biden was this aging, incompetent buffoon who couldn't manage without his teleprompter. Biden was well-prepared to hit Trump back; it's sad to say, but perhaps the most quoted line was "will you just shut up, man?"; I didn't agree with much of anything Biden said policy-wise, but he was able to respond coherently and nail his talking points. The only caution I have is that you aren't going to out-Trump Trump. By throwing sand back in Trump's eyes you may be able to prove you have a spine, but you run the risk of raising the unfavorables of "I like Uncle Joe" with swing voters.
I wrote in a recent journal post that I thought that the debates represented Trump's best opportunity to cut into Biden's 7-point or so national lead. And keep in mind there are still 2 debates ahead, and I do expect the race to tighten a bit from here. There will be a number of analyses of "who won the debate", but my standpoint is that while Trump may have won on points, he didn't land a knockout punch and I didn't notice, at least at the time, any obvious gaffe for the Biden campaign. I tweeted out a joke after the debate: "who else thought they were watching a remake of 'Grumpy Old Men'?" But it didn't seem to me that Trump landed a serious blow during the debate that will narrow Biden's lead significantly, which I think he needed to do under the circumstances. So from that perspective I think Biden achieved what he needed to get from the debate; he was articulate and showed he could stand up to Trump and hold his own.
Finally, let me articulate a few points, primarily based on my perspective, not necessarily endorsing Trump's own responses:
- Biden's response on the Supreme Court appointment. First, obviously he has a vested interest on wanting to make the decision to nominate the judge to succeed RBG, but Trump makes the cogent argument he has the power until the end of his term in January and likewise the GOP controlled Senate to confirm. But he sees the justice to be someone who defers to the will of the legislative majority, e.g., on ObamaCare. In a recent RBG essay, I've made it clear that I disdain abandonment of economic liberty in presuming deference to a legislative majority (cf. Footnote 4 et al.) I conceptually disagree with Biden's view of a justice as a super-legislator. SCOTUS should be independent in scrutinizing whether legislation is consistent with the Constitution and the defense of (possibly unenumerated) individual rights.
- Biden's economically illiterate Politics of Envy. For example, Biden wants to eliminate at least part of the Trump tax cut, especially to the corporate marginal rate which he wants to raise about a third. Trump relevantly pointed out that higher rates might provide a company an incentive to relocate its headquarters overseas, e.g., low Irish tax rates. I've long pointed out progressive income tax rates are counterproductive; it provides an incentive to defer realization of income. If you are going to have an income tax, it should be flatter and lower.
- Biden's bogus reinvention of green energy government "investment" in renewable energy. Remember Obama's planned economic recovery based on government spending on education, infrastructure and green energy? We ended up with mediocre returns and infamous scandals like Solyendra. Like other parts of the economy, it may well be that prices have gone down over time, but what is in dispute is how much, if any, part government had in that.
- Biden takes credit for the "economic boon" he engineered "inheriting" the Great Recession that he claims Trump is taking credit for. Trump is partially correct that we had had the slowest recovery since the Depression. Let's point out that the recession ended within 6 months of Obama's Presidency, and Obama/Biden had done nothing to alleviate it other than signing a massive stimulus bill, little of which was spent during that period, never mind the typical latency effect we would expect from macroeconomic policies. I also think policy in the 111th Congress also created a great deal of economic uncertainty hampering economic recovery. It is true that some job growth occurred during the remaining 7 years of the Obama Presidency, but for the record Obama never achieved the long-term economic growth rate of 3.1% or so (and for that matter neither did Trump, who once again hyped having the greatest economy in American history). Neither Obama nor Trump saw the job/economic growth seen during the '80's or '90's.
- Biden's "buy American" economic initiative seems to have complete amnesia of Trump's 2017 executive order to buy/hire American. I expected Trump to say something; maybe he did and I didn't hear it. But I don't see any hope for win-win free trade coming out of protectionist Biden or Trump.
- Biden seemed to blame Trump for the spread and casualties of COVID-19, including the economic consequences of economic shutdowns, many of which were the result of local or state officials' decisions beyond Trump's control. Now I think Trump made some major mistakes, especially given the early government monopoly over (botched) testing, poor CDC and FDA bureaucratic processes, and Trump's rhetoric, bashing of scientists and reorganization of the pandemic response team are open to criticism.
