The first presidential debate was a study in contrasting styles, but these crucial issues were never even discussed
Published
September 28, 2016 9:59AM (EDT)
Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton at the presidential debate in Hempstead, New York, September 26, 2016. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
Is it too soon to start looking forward to the second presidential debate? Well, Donald Trump has yet to stop relitigating the first one, having spent most of Tuesday blaming his terrible Monday night performance by turns on moderator Lester Holt, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado and a debate commission that he suggested gave him a faulty microphone on purpose.
But while much of the post-debate commentary focused on how well Republican presidential nominee Trump and his rival Hillary Clinton performed under the bright lights of the debate stage, less attention was paid to the policies each one has been advocating. In Trump’s case this is partly because he changes his policy preferences more often than most people change their underwear.
Don’t like a Trump proposal? Wait 30 seconds, he’ll have another one.
As for Clinton, her reputation is that of a policy wonk who loves to dig deep into issues. Indeed, that’s supposed to be one of the selling points of her candidacy. Campaign surrogates have often cited the thousands of words about policy on her website versus the few hundred on Trump’s.
One area where she struggles is in connecting the importance of her policy solutions to their ability to materially affect disaffected voters who are unenthusiastic about voting for her. So some pointed questions on policy might help her in this area, if she can answer them without some of the stiltedness that she showed at times on Monday night.
Of course, it is difficult to fit complex policy solutions into the two minutes allotted for answering questions. And any candidate will want to avoid going deep into the policy weeds and losing the audience. Still, there were some glaring omissions: The list of matters that got no airtime or at most a passing mention on Monday includes some of the most pressing issues we face.
So with the next debate scheduled for a week from this Sunday, here are a couple of topics that moderators Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC must ask the candidates about:
Climate change
President Barack Obama has said climate change is the most pressing foreign policy issue of our time. The competition of nations for resources that have been degraded and diminished by a warming planet is already leading to violent conflicts around the world. Indeed, there is some evidence that a drought driven by climate change has planted the seeds of the civil war in Syria that will be a foreign-policy priority for the next president.
The United States is a party to worldwide climate treaties that require it to do its part to reduce emissions. So whether a new administration would honor those treaties is an important matter for the rest of the world.