I’d seen this clip long ago, but was reminded of it today by Eric Redman. On re-viewing, I find it utterly absorbing. For any rich person to say these things about the movie, and its theme of the isolation of wealth, would be something. But from the Trump we now (think we) know, the clip is more like astonishing. The man we see here seems … introspective. Self-aware. You can start at time 2:00 to get a sample:

In my 2004 Atlantic piece about the presidential debates between incumbent George W. Bush and his challenger John Kerry, I discussed a puzzling aspect of Bush’s oratorical record. In his time on the national stage, from the beginning of his presidential campaign in 1999 to the end of his presidency, George W. Bush was famous for his mis-phrasing and malapropisms. (“Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?” etc.)

But back in 1994, when he ran against the famously silver-tongued Ann Richards for governor of Texas, Bush was a very good speaker! He actually bested her in their debates (and then the election) and showed fluent command of details and phrasing.

What happened to Bush between 1994 and 1999? I don’t know. But whatever was underway—deliberate folksy-izing, unintended shift—seems also to have affected Trump in the decade since Errol Morris’s clip was shot.

***

The other famous video, which has bounced around for a while but attracted new attention this past week, is Trump’s heartfelt testimonial in 2008 about the virtues of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. One version is below—with the bonus of being followed by an infomercial for Trump Steaks! Other similar statements are here, here, and here.

Here is a related video:

What does this all mean? I don’t know. But the tone—the bearing, the gravitas, the timbre—of the earlier Trump in these samples is quite different from the man before us now. (On the other hand, the Trump of the “grab them by ..” Access Hollywood tape was of roughly this era too.)

Might this other Trump have had a better chance? I no longer can even pretend to guess, or judge.

For the first eight or ten minutes, things are going more or less OK for Trump. As you can see:

• Around time 1:25:45, he begins a semi-obvious but good-spirited riff on self-deprecation itself. (Modesty is my greatest quality, etc.)
• Around 1:26:30, he gives a kind of charming routine about his “perfectly formed hands.” Bonus here: Through the GOP primaries, he seemed to have absolutely zero sense of humor about his petite digits. This is progress!
• Around 1:30:45, a mean-edged—but nothing like what’s coming—bit about Hillary Clinton and Rosie O’Donnell.
• Then, starting at 1:32:00, a genuinely funny joke about his wife Melania’s plagiarized speech. This was perfectly delivered and would count as a classic of public-event self-deprecation—except that he’s not making fun of himself. He’s making fun of her. (And then has her stand up in a way that sort of compounds the offense, although she takes it graciously.)
• From 1:34:00 onwards he goes off the rails, and seems to imagine that he is at a true-believer rally where the crowd is shouting “Lock her up!” In fact, this crowd, at a religious-charity event, in what he thinks of as his town, starts to boo.

***   

For convenience here is the same clip again, this time cued to begin when Hillary Clinton takes the stage around time 1:41:30. I’ve watched her presentation twice now and think it deserves a careful look. Some guideposts:

• The first minute or so is standard “earnest” intro. But then:
• At 1:43:00 an effortless, quick offhand remark about “my rigorous nap schedule.” This is straight from Self-Deprecatory Political Humor 101. You show awareness of a wisecrack about you, and you also show that you can just laugh about it. She follows it with a not-quite-as-artful (because it’s not quite as funny to her) crack that she usually “charges a lot” for this kind of speech.
• Starting at 1:44:20, a nice little sequence of religio-political-gender humor, first with the “miracle” of her getting through the debates, and building to the “stained-glass ceiling” (without spelling out that she is of course talking about the patriarchal Catholic church).
• Almost immediately after that, following an interlude for a mayor-versus-governor New York politico joke, at 1:45:15 onward she has another very artful minute-long stretch. In quick succession it touches these items: “baskets” of people; pantsuits; Trump’s interrupting her at the debates; and “peaceful transfer of power.” Anyone who has labored in these fields will recognize this passage as both skillfully written and impressively delivered.
• At 1:47:00, the “Statue of Liberty is a four, maybe five tops” line.
• Then at 1:47:45, “And I’ve been to three!” which again is Self-Deprecation 101.
• At 1:49:35, a joke at her own expense (“This counts as a press conference, right?”) followed immediately by one at Trump’s expense (it’s too bad that Mike Bloomberg isn’t speaking, “because we’d all be curious what a [real] billionaire has to say.” Bada-bing!) And right after that the meanest but most deserved joke of the entire speech, about Rudy Giuliani. The cut-away to a glowering Giuliani shows that he has even worse poker-face control than Trump.
• At 1:51:00, what starts as classic self-deprecation, about Trump’s call for a drug test before the debate, and builds to a surprisingly serious “joke.” I won’t spoil or belabor this, but it’s worth watching for yourself.
• Skipping over some other riffs, including a nice one about the “Muslim ban,” we come to my favorite little morsel of deadpan delivery. It starts at 1:53:50. The punchline involves “a hearse.”

***

What trait of Trump’s did last evening reinforce? It’s one I emphasized in my October-issue piece: that he has one speed, he is exactly and only who he is, and while he can momentarily shift registers sooner or later he comes back to one persona. That person cannot really laugh at himself, or even feign to for very long. That person is angry.

And what do we see about Hillary Clinton? That a trait of hers that is always taken for granted, and frequently sneered-about, is actually of great consequence. Namely: that she works, that she tries, that she practices, that she prepares—and as a result of all these things, she improves.

We know about the “naturals” in politics—JFK in one way, Ronald Reagan in another, each of the past two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Obama, with their very different approaches. Hillary Clinton has often remarked (and no doubt rued) that she is not as “natural” or “gifted” in these public-presentation skills as Democratic presidents #44 and #42. No doubt there is enormous gendered baggage that comes along with these contrasts: the “naturally charming” FDR versus the “hard-working” Eleanor, on to the Bill/Hillary comparison now.

Conceivably Barack Obama makes his dryly effective comic appearances without “trying” as hard as Hillary Clinton has to. But she reminded us last night that what matters is the result. Presumably she tried very hard; demonstrably she did very well, while also demonstrating mastery of a skill she hadn’t displayed this clearly before (high-stakes deadpan comedy).

The most graceful performers—Federer, Jordan, Simone Biles, Fred Astaire, FDR—make the result of endless hard work seem effortless. Hillary Clinton can’t conceal the effort. But, as in the old line about Ginger Rogers, she has demonstrated command of ever more graceful moves.

***

Seventeen days and a few hours until the election. For the first time since Richard Nixon, no tax returns or plausible health information forthcoming from a major party nominee. It now appears that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and the “responsible” leadership of their party will ride out this disaster to the end, all the while contending, as they still officially do, that Donald Trump is the best choice as our next president.

From the opening moments of the first debate, she sent out a a nonstop stream of provocations, subtle or obvious, all tailored to wounding Trump’s vanities. The topics ranged from his not really being rich, to being a man of the beauty-pageant world, to not paying taxes, to being a chronic liar, to generally being preposterous. Sooner or later in each debate, usually sooner, it worked! Trump simply could not resist the bait. He would go off on exactly the tirades the Clinton campaign was hoping to evoke from him. You saw it again last night: for the first 30 minutes or so, he was so stately as to seem semi-sedated. Then she began teasing him, and she got him to snap and interrupt.

So from an unprecedented and potentially unpredictable confrontation, we saw the behavior many people anticipated from each candidate. Very carefully prepped Belichick-type execution of a precise plan from one side. On the other side, wild slugging by someone who might as well have had a bucket over his head.

***

2) Moderator. Given Fox News’s stake in this race—Sean Hannity as unapologetic campaign booster for Trump, Roger Ailes drifting between the organizations—the pre-debate question about moderator Chris Wallace, of Fox, was which part of the now-split Fox consciousness he would represent. The movement-activist part, which has made Fox essentially the only “news” outlet on which Trump will appear in recent weeks? Or the actual-journalist part, as Fox’s Shep Smith and Bret Baier usually illustrate and as Megyn Kelly sometimes does—for instance, when memorably dressing down Karl Rove while the Ohio vote was being counted four years ago?

Congrats to Wallace, who conducted most of the debate as if it were an actual interview on substance; who reminded candidates of the question he had originally asked, when they drifted afield; who (like Anderson Cooper in round two) was polite in tone while maintaining control of the discussion; and who improvised in a non-gimmicky way by ending the debate with an “unexpected” call for a brief closing statement. Of course this was one of the many contingencies Hillary Clinton had fully prepared for; of course it was one of many developments to which Donald Trump had given no advance thought. So she reeled off a practiced-seeming one-minute wrapup, and he gave what appeared to be random highlights from his rally speeches. Imagine the debate planning that would have Trump use the final few seconds of his final debate appearance thus: “Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store. They have no education.”

***

3) The tyranny of the “deficit nightmare.” My one criticism of Wallace’s debate-management is the one Paul Krugman lays out in more detail here. I will bet—oh, let’s say, a trillion dollars—that when someone looks back on the 2016 campaign and asks, “What’s a major long-term danger that got shockingly little attention in the campaign?” the answer is not going to be “the federal budget deficit.” But Wallace hammered on this exaggerated threat in two extended discussions. I bet that the answer is going to be climate change and sustainability in all forms. Unless I missed it, no question from any of the moderators was on this theme.

Of course public services must pay their way in the long run. But the hold that deficit-hawkery has on “respectable” discussion these days is quite remarkable.

So, for Chris Wallace: if you’d swapped even one of your deficit questions for a climate one, it would have been an even better job. Still, well done overall.

***

4) HRC’s worst moment. It occurred an hour in, when Wallace asked her a perfectly straightforward question about “pay for play” criticisms of the Clinton Foundation, and she started talking all around the topic as if she was trying to avoid the question or had something to hide. On the merits as I understand them, most of the “pay for play” with the Clinton Foundation is stuck in the realm of “lingering questions” and “gives rise to questionable appearances,” rather than of anyone having nailed down a quid-pro-quo. Smoke rather than fire. This is quite a contrast to the netherworld of the Trump “Foundation,” as David Fahrenthold of the WaPo has plumbed it. But she sounded as if she were talking around the issue, in the way her critics assume her always to do.

In context, this didn’t “matter,” because so much else was going her way, and because Trump jumped in after a minute with a standard over-the-top accusation that the Clinton Foundation was “a criminal enterprise.” This in turn gave her a chance to start talking about his objectively shady-seeming foundation. So it didn’t change the flow of this debate, but it would be better if she could resist talking this way. (Sample at end of this item, along with the full video.)

***

5) Trump’s worst moment. I was about to say there’s no contest here, but actually there is. One of his off-hand remarks was abysmal as a matter of substance; the other joins the parade of catastrophic touches of style.

The substance offense was of course Trump’s refusal to say that he would “accept” the results of the election, if he lost. The whole concept of “peaceful transfer of power” depends on the group that loses an election willingly accepting their defeat. Back in installment #143 I laid out the contrasts between Trump’s emerging stance and the previous centuries of our history. You can also read Peter Beinart on our site and The Atlantic’s live-blog team, and practically anything else in print or online today.

And Trump’s stylistic touch? Of course it is “such a nasty woman.” It was much worse in context than in seems on the page, both because of the way he said it (hint: You’ll see it in Democratic ads) and because of what brought it on. It was in response to this from Hillary Clinton, with emphasis added to what was presented as a quick little throwaway dig:

Chris, I am on record as saying that we need to put more money into the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald's, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it. But what we want to do is to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund...

Bait offered. Bait taken! As I’ve argued repeatedly, the temperamental demands of the presidency are even more exacting than its intellectual and physical-stamina requirements. One of our candidates repeatedly shows that he has the temperament we expect people to be growing beyond by the time they reach middle school.

And Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and the whole tattered supporting cast still say, Make this man president!

Here endeth my 2016 presidential-debate coverage. And not one millisecond too soon.

***

For reference, here is the way the “pay to play” discussion evolved. Points to note: Wallace’s attempts to get an answer to his question; Clinton’s talking-around the question; Trump’s crude overplay of his hand:

WALLACE: Secretary Clinton, during your 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, you promised to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with your dealing with the Clinton Foundation. ...

Can you really say that you kept your pledge to that Senate committee? And why isn’t what happened and what went on between you and the Clinton Foundation, why isn’t it what Mr. Trump calls pay to play?

CLINTON: Well, everything I did as secretary of state was in furtherance of our country’s interests and our values. The State Department has said that. I think that's been proven.

But I am happy, in fact I’m thrilled to talk about the Clinton Foundation, because it is a world-renowned charity and I am so proud of the work that it does. You know, I could talk for the rest of the debate—I know I don’t have the time to do that.

But just briefly, the Clinton Foundation made it possible for 11 million people around the world with HIV-AIDS to afford treatment, and that's about half all the people in the world who are getting treatment. In partnership with the American Health Association ...

WALLACE: Secretary Clinton ...

CLINTON: ... we have made environments in schools healthier for kids, including healthier lunches ...

WALLACE: Secretary Clinton, respectfully, this is—this is an open discussion.

CLINTON: Well, it is an open discussion. And you ...

WALLACE: And the specific question went to pay for play. Do you want to talk about that?

CLINTON: Well, but there is no—but there is no evidence—but there is ...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I think that it’s been very well ...

WALLACE: Let’s ask Mr. Trump.

CLINTON: There is a lot of evidence about the very good work ...

TRUMP: It’s been very well studied.

CLINTON: ... and the high rankings ...

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Please let Mr. Trump speak.

TRUMP: ... and it’s a criminal enterprise, and so many people know it.

***

And for the sake of completeness:

Plus the very gracious reply from the North Carolina GOP:

Also for the record: such an attack is evil and damages democracy more than it does a specific party. I hope whoever did it is brought to justice.

Gore had every reason imaginable to challenge Bush v. Gore and the whole circumstances of the election. He was half a million votes ahead in the nationwide popular vote, and for more than a century the popular-vote winner had become president. The Florida secretary of state, who was in charge of the recount, was co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Florida. The governor of the state, Jeb Bush, was his opponent’s brother! The reasoning of the Supreme Court’s ruling was so nakedly results-oriented that the Court itself said that it should not be taken as a precedent in any future rulings.

And yet, Gore said: The Court has spoken; I accept the results. His statement on December 14, 2000, is all the more remarkable with the passing years:

Over the library of one of our great law schools is inscribed the motto: “Not under man, but under God and law.” That’s the ruling principle of American freedom, the source of our democratic liberties. I’ve tried to make it my guide throughout this contest, as it has guided America's deliberations of all the complex issues of the past five weeks.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.

I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new president-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends.

***

This is the context in which to view Donald Trump’s willfully destructive “Election is rigged!” complaints, as he descends to an irretrievable position in the polls. The rhetoric of illegitimacy of course has a history in our politics. In recent times, Rush Limbaugh and others made much of Bill Clinton’s failure to win an absolute majority of votes. (Although Clinton won easily in 1992 and 1996, Ross Perot kept him from going over 50 percent of the popular vote either time.) The logic of “birtherism,” with Trump as its most prominent exponent, was that Barack Obama had an illegitimate claim on office.

But Trump’s increasing drumbeat of assertions that the only way he could lose the election is if it is “rigged”—too many of “those people” voting in the big cities, the heavy hand of Carlos Slim changing the results, God knows what else—is different, and dangerous. You can read wrapups of what he is doing here and here and here and here, and in a tweetstorm here.

You can read a dissection of why it is so dangerous, by political scientist Shaun Bowler, here. The essence of Bowler’s argument is that democracies depend on the losing party accepting, if grudgingly and painfully, the results at the polls. If not, everything else comes into question:

In the aftermath of a loss, there is plenty of kindling for irresponsible politicians to set fire to. They could stoke the feelings that remain temporary in ordinary times, transforming them into civic unrest and even civil disobedience. Most politicians who lose elections recognize this potential for mischief, and so they ordinarily make a creditable run at helping to keep matters calm.

A textbook example is provided by President George Bush Sr., whose concession speech included the following statement: “Here’s the way we see it and the country should see it—that the people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the democratic system. I just called Gov. Clinton over in Little Rock and offered my congratulations. He did run a strong campaign.”

In making this statement, President Bush signaled that the election was over and he lost fair and square.

What Trump is doing is new. And it’s bad. Other people have not done this.

And while Paul Ryan said today that he was “fully confident” in the election process and rejected the “rigged” suspicions, he still supports Trump for president.

Twenty-three days to go.

***

Update A reader who is a lawyer on the east coast writes in about the “projection” hypothesis:

The projection theory is interesting.  What I can’t tell is to what extent Trump is aware that he’s just throwing feces against the wall.  How much of this does he believe—rigged election, international media conspiracy, Hilary belongs in jail, etc.  To what extent does he believe that attacking the looks of his various accusers is a sound strategy?  How delusional is he?

I think it’s impossible to tell.  An obviously undisciplined guy, ever since the first debate he’s become completely unhinged, making just about every bad choice he could make in his campaign, shaking off the advice of the campaign professionals, listening to Bannon and the other hardcore crowd (and it’s not clear that they care about winning as much as they care about trashing Hillary).

It’s impossible to tell if he thinks he actually has a reasonable chance to win this election.  It appears than none of the GOP “leadership” thinks he can win, the major polls indicate he can’t, the big GOP funders have walked away.

There is a real possibility that what we are seeing with Trump now is mental breakdown, but again, it’s impossible to tell if that’s what’s going on or what we’re seeing is his sociopathic character coming out as the setbacks and pressures mount.

I understand the dilemma that Ryan and the other GOP elected officials and RNC officials face.  But at what point, if any, are they obligated to disavow Trump?  Perhaps their thinking is that they don’t need to court this sort of controversy within their party, since he’s going to lose anyway.

As noted before, I’m wary of speculating about whether what we’re seeing from Trump amounts to some kind of diagnosable mental disorder. Obviously I couldn’t presume to judge from a distance, and fundamentally it doesn’t matter. Whatever the explanation, his words and actions are unacceptable.

It’s also clear to me that the entire Republican establishment now assumes (and probably hopes) that he is going to lose. Maybe that makes their endorsement of him less damaging: it’s not going to make any difference. But I still think it’s squalid. This is as clear a test of country-before-party as any of us has seen in our lifetimes. And I think the Republican establishment will regret the choice so many of its members are making now.

Everyone knows that the Republican party is having operational problems. But the real problem, Kagan says, is not that the party is not falling apart. Rather it’s that the party is holding together, in support for a candidate its leaders know beyond doubt would be a grave danger in office.

Robert Kagan begins his case about failure of responsibility this way:

Of the remarkable things we have learned this election year, the most significant is that the current Republican Party is unfit to lead the country. It has failed the greatest test a political leader or party can face, and failed spectacularly. It has abandoned its principles out of a combination of cowardice and opportunism. It has worked to place in the White House the most dangerous threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War. ...

These are the people we’re supposed to put in charge of the House and Senate for another two years? Whom we’re then supposed to rally behind in the battle for the White House in 2020? No. Not this group. We know too much. We know all we need to know.

The whole thing is worth reading. Paul Ryan and others in the GOP establishment will try to forget all this starting on November 9. The rest of us should remember.

***

2. Can’t tell your Trump lineup without a scorecard. As noted back in installment #134, Daniel Nichanian of the University of Chicago has been keeping a running update of the elected GOP officials in several groups: those who “criticize” Trump but still endorse him (the “full Ryan”), those who actually have un-endorsed him, and those who withdrew support after last week’s tape but, incredibly, have crawled back. This last inglorious group includes two plains-state senators—Deb Fischer of Nebraska and John Thune of South Dakota—and two representatives, Bradley Byrne of Alabama and Scott Garrett of New Jersey. The NYT had a story on the crawlback phenomenon, here. And a reader wrote about the illogic of their stance:

Of the many contradictions Republicans are caught in, one less obvious one is the claim that they can manage Trump once he is in office, so vote Trump because Supreme Court or taxes or something. And yet these are the same people cowering in fear of his base. I am sure their spines will regenerate in the warm light of a presidential victory, making them adequate to the task of containing Trump.

***

3. Michelle Obama speaks. You have probably heard about the power of the first lady’s speech, in New Hampshire, on the implications of Donald Trump’s sexual-assault rhetoric and behavior.

I just saw a clip of the speech now. It truly is remarkable and deserves notice. You can read about it in the WaPo here and NY Mag here. An online video is here. “This isn’t about politics. It’s about basic human decency.”  When people talk about the bully pulpit, this is the kind of thing they have in mind.

***

4. See you in court. After the NYT ran a story quoting two women who said that Donald Trump had groped, ogled, or kissed them, Trump’s lawyers issued an immediate demand for retraction.

The response from David McCraw, the lawyer speaking for the NYT, is a thing of beauty. You can read it here. It ends this way:

We did what the law allows: We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern. If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what those women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.

***

5. The intel community despairs, again. I’ve mentioned in previous installments that a long line of former CIA directors and other intel veterans have warned against Donald Trump in office, and that Trump has already abused the confidence of briefers who have updated him on world trouble spots.

Now the WaPo carries a story on intel-veterans’ concern that Trump is dismissing out of hand all evidence that Russian officialdom is trying to meddle directly in the 2016 U.S. election:

The former officials, who have served presidents in both parties, say they were bewildered when Trump cast doubt on Russia’s role after receiving a classified briefing on the subject and again after an unusually blunt statement from U.S. agencies saying they were “confident” that Moscow had orchestrated the attacks.

“It defies logic,” retired Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said of Trump’s pronouncements. ...

“He seems to ignore their advice,” Hayden said. “Why would you assume this would change when he is in office?”

To say it again: Nothing remotely like any of this has happened before. And still Paul Ryan and the GOP establishment say, Let’s make this man president! Remember that on November 8, and long afterward.

My guess is no, as it replays and sinks in. As a reminder: Trump cannot win just with his revved-up GOP primary base. He needs to attract new supporters, especially from the groups where he now is dramatically weak: among women, non-whites, young people, and highly educated people. Back in her 2000 race for the U.S. Senate from New York, polls suggested that Hillary Clinton was significantly helped rather than hurt when her opponent Rick Lazio did a very mild version of the alpha-male move by walking over very close to her during a debate. Al Gore apparently also lost support by walking up close to George W. Bush during one of their presidential debates that same year. Neither of those amounted to anything, compared with what we saw last night.

I’ll see whether Jane Goodall is within communication range this week, for after-action analysis of what we all saw. For now, I’m betting that it’s one more strike against Trump. Nigel Farage, who can’t vote anyway, is all the more enthusiastic. The majority-female U.S. electorate? There I bet it hurts.

This is a gorilla rather than a chimpanzee, but you get the point: