Her smile betrayed Hillary Clinton. It was too long, too frequent and obviously planned. It was a silent statement that she, the mature adult on the stage, was showing the stoic forbearance of a saint against an unruly child.
But the unruly child didn’t cooperate with her plan. Donald Trump was a brawler from start to finish and played very rough, but was never wild, and was nowhere near the monster she needed him to be.
Maybe now she will take him seriously. She’d better if she wants to be president.
Going into the first debate, Trump had to step over a very low bar. All he had to do was reassure voters that he was neither a lunatic nor an idiot, and could control his temper for 90 minutes.
He cleared the bar, delivering a series of passionate moments on issues of substance, such as trade, jobs and taxes in the first few minutes. And while he regressed into an old habit of wandering into rhetorical dead ends, interrupting, making faces and talking too much about his business, he never lost his cool in a way that would have been a disaster.
Clinton faced several key challenges, too. One, given her health issues, was to avoid a coughing fit or show any signs of physical distress.
A second was to display her preparation and vast library of knowledge without getting lost in the weeds, and a third was to get under Trump’s skin.
Check, check and check. Mission accomplished.
Yet while both candidates achieved most of what they had to, the result isn’t equal. A slugfest standoff, which is what America witnessed last night, is much better for Trump than it is for Clinton.
She is the de facto incumbent and his merely surviving benefits him as the challenger. He wobbled at times and was not as orderly in his preparation, but proved he could take her best punches on the big stage. It wasn’t his best night, but it was good enough.
If that sounds as though the Republican nominee is being graded on a curve to win the most powerful and important office in the world, don’t blame Trump. Blame Clinton and her media handmaidens.
Their synchronized effort to demonize Trump and paint him as being temperamentally unfit to be president is not working. They set the bar too low by defining Trump as way outside the lines of normal political discourse, and therefore an unacceptable alternative to her. Tens of millions of Americans don’t agree.
Moreover, the strategy also gives Trump a challenge he could handle and control over his own destiny. For last night at least, he beat the Clinton juggernaut at their own game.
Chalk the mistake up to Clinton arrogance. As it did with Bernie Sanders, who almost grabbed the Democratic nomination from her, Clinton’s team never took Trump seriously. They assumed that general-election voters wouldn’t, either.
Even more amazing, they apparently still believe that if only they keep describing him as unqualified, the public will get on board and the Trump candidacy will collapse. Just the other day, Clinton asked union supporters, “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?,” suggesting she still doesn’t understand why the race is even competitive, let alone a dead heat.
At the same time, her own problems — an image of being dishonest and untrustworthy — are not things she can fix or control. Her only hope is that Trump would come off as too risky for most voters, and the smile would be her way of saying, “I told you so.”
He still might cooperate, but not last night. He flirted with danger, yet did not get tripped up or make any huge mistakes.
No surprise, she did benefit from the decisions of moderator Lester Holt. He asked only one brief question about her email scandal without mentioning the FBI investigation, and never raised the family foundation scandals.
Fairness dictated Holt should have pressed Clinton more, especially because he asked Trump about two hot-button issues: the Obama birther issue in the context of race, and why he hadn’t released his personal income taxes.
But even that imbalance ultimately might serve Trump. The test was survival, and media bias is fuel for his movement.
So even after an unfair fight, he lives to fight another day.
We’ll know in a few days whether undecided voters were moved in either direction, but my guess is that the race still will be close when the second debate comes around in 12 days.