Hillary Clinton Passes Stamina Test In First Presidential Debate
By Ukachi Uwadinobi New York
AHEAD OF THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE at Hofstra University, New York, so much had been talked about the readiness of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Of the two presidential hopefuls, pundits described Clinton as the studious professional politician more experienced in debates than her rival Trump, a neophyte who’s not used to the rigorous routine of doing mock debates. In fact, by Trump’s own admission, he dislikes the idea of debate preps and prefers the spontaneity of not being scripted or programmed to recite memorized texts. And so it was, while Clinton was off the campaign trail recovering from the bout of pneumonia she had a few weeks ago and preparing for last night’s debate, Trump continued to campaign and showed little interest for mock debates as a means of getting him ready for the biggest political contest of his life. The consequence of his choice against debate preps couldn’t be more evident during the 90 minute long encounter. In one seminal moment during the encounter, Clinton eloquently drove home the point about readiness, when Trump unwittingly had commented about Clinton’s time off the campaign trail in recent weeks griping she stayed home preparing for the debate. “Yes, Donald, I stayed home to prepare for this debate, and you know something else I did, I stayed home to prepare to be president, and that’s a good thing,” she added. The zinger instantly drew a roar of applause from the audience. After the debate, many Clinton supporters thought she wiped the floor with Trump like a vacuum cleaner. The big question the day after was: Can Hillary Clinton’s performance swing voters in her favor? As viewers saw during the debate, the proof was in the pudding on some indices:
STAMINA – nearly thirty minutes into the contest, Trump, who had repeatedly claimed Clinton lacked stamina, started showing signs of physical exhaustion and reaching for water like “Little Marco Rubio” in a familiar setting a while back. He was also sniffing intermittently as if he had cold or ADULT RESPIRATORY DISTRESS SYNDROME (ARDS) or better yet, TRUMP RESPIRATORY DISTRESS SYNDROME (TRDS). It was laughable that Trump went on FOX Network TV morning show (Fox & Friends) the day after and blamed his uncontrollable sniffing on “bad microphone.” As providence would have it, Hillary Clinton showed no sign or symptom of physical ailment or distress such as coughing fits or spasm or passing out, like Team Trump had hoped would happen, after they’d had a field day in the wake of Clinton’s pneumonia episode during the 9/11 remembrance event in Manhattan. Much to Team Trump’s chagrin, Clinton had no water in sight, not to talk of even taking a single sip during the 90 minute long debate devoid of bathroom or tv commercial break. Quite a feat for someone Trump and company had expected would have had coughing fits!
Trump on the other hand dithered around the issues with no intellectual depth to his argument. All that viewers heard from him, when moderator NBC TV Nightly News anchor Lester Holts pressed him for specifics on how he’d bring back jobs to America from corporations who’d shipped off their operations overseas, was the familiar refrain: “They’re taking our jobs; we’re losing in everything; we don’t win anymore.” It became clear that his transparent lack of substantive argument which conned the GOP base electorate and sailed him to victory during the primary, ironically would sink him during the general election.
CORE PRINCIPLE — The fact that Trump looked the American people in the eye during the debate and deplorably admitted that stiffing his own employees and contractors who worked for him, and profited from multiple bankruptcy filings that left his business associates hung out to dry, somehow were “smart business” and desirable virtues Americans should expect of their president, revealed how morally bankrupt and ethically challenged Trump is to be allowed to run for the highest office in the land. On race issue, the birther expedition he spearheaded and peddled with glee for five years to humiliate a legitimate sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, and adamantly refused to own up or apologize for the bigotry he espoused and encouraged among his ilk, showed how insincere he’s been lately in his attempt to court the black votes, arguably an exercise that many believe would end in futility!
Ukachi Uwadinobi is a Nigerian born writer and frequent contributor to Amandla newspaper, and occasionally a guest panelist on Jersey GhanaRadio.com, an internet radio talk show hosted on weekends by New Jersey based Amandla newspaper Editor, Kofi Ayim.
Posted by