Credit: JIM WATSON, SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
Editor's Note:
Roberto Izurieta is Director of Latin American Projects at George Washington University.
He has worked in political campaigns in several Latin American countries and Spain, and was an advisor to Presidents Alejandro Toledo of Peru, Vicente Fox of Mexico, and Álvaro Colom of Guatemala.
Izurieta is also a contributor to CNN en Español.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author. See more opinions at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN) -
For years I have worked teaching how a modern and civilized democracy can work.
But Tuesday's debate seemed to remind me of many well-known debates by certain politicians in Latin American history that resemble a dog fight.
What happened on Tuesday did not resemble a debate, but rather a program by Laura Bozzo with her famous and appropriate phrase "let the wretch pass."
Who wins when there's a debate like this week's between Donald Trump and Joe Biden?
Well, none.
But by not winning any, the one who was first in the polls, that is Biden, would continue to win.
I would have liked Trump to have been confronted (or put in order) by someone like Kamala Harris, who with a career working as a California attorney and prosecutor knows how to put in order those who do not play by the rules.
Without a doubt, a firm response from the Democratic candidate would have motivated his base a lot, as Donald Trump will have done with his.
But it is difficult to know, because a mutual and direct confrontation would perhaps cause some undecided or "soft" voters, who in this election are scarce, not to vote.
Even so, the one who goes first would still win.
Like many, I would have liked a confrontation of ideas and plans: to have a better horizon of how each one will handle what is left of this pandemic.
Also for Donald Trump to answer why he denied it and to assume his responsibility.
But the only thing they demonstrated in an hour and a half of debate was a great display of the same thing that we have seen in four years of Donald Trump.
If he has a merit, it is his consistency in showing us that for him everything is personal and his responses are generally an attack.
How do you respond to an abusive person?
Without a doubt, with education, but also with discipline and firmness.
Discipline that could not be achieved by the moderator who, despite being from Fox News, was surprised by what we are already cured of terror: this is the president and that is how he will continue to be.
There will be no surprises.
Biden was affected.
I do not blame him: it is not easy to deal with an abusive or spoiled child The best part of the debate reminded me of the famous phrase of the emeritus king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, when he got fed up with the verbiage of the then president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez , and yelled, "Why don't you shut up?"
during the Ibero-American Summit held in Santiago de Chile in 2007.
The only good thing is that in general, the second debate will not affect Biden as much or at least he will get used to it.
But who has the stomach to see the second and third debates?
I think less than the first.
So this week's debate was important.
There is nothing like the first impression.
Of all the phrases and confrontations, the one that will go down in history and in this case, tragically, will be Donald Trump's response to a white supremacist group "Proud Boys: back off and wait" ("stand back and stand by"). In a country that has been through a civil war against slavery and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, it is truly shameful that at this stage of the party we have to hear that racists are legitimized.
It is not the first time and it will not be the last.
After The New York Times published a report on Monday about Donald Trump's indefensible payment of federal income taxes of US $ 750 in 10 of 15 years from 2000, and that the polls are largely silent, giving Biden an advantage of at least 5 points (he went from 9 in some), Trump needed to change the dynamics.
It only reinforced it.
Trump suffers from what is very common among many presidents: arrogance and the distance that power produces.
At the end of the day, it is very easy for nobody in power to question you and therefore, more difficult for him to question himself.
Donald Trump will have designed his own strategy, which is nothing more than his personality: aggressive.
This has undoubtedly consolidated its electoral base, despite a badly managed pandemic.
With 4% of the world's population, the US has 20.4% of deaths from covid-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
His base has not been moved by the economic crisis or the hypocrisy he showed four years ago, when he said that Barack Obama could not appoint and the US Senate confirm a judge of the Supreme Court of Justice.
That was months before the 2016 election and now, already in the middle of the electoral process, the majority of Republican senators are ready to confirm a judge after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, even with only 51 votes. (Bader Ginsburg took office with the vote of 96 out of 100 senators on August 3, 1993).
There is no election more important for America than this, and there is no clearer choice than this.
No one can be surprised by the behavior of Donald Trump.
Not before and not now.
With so much information, I think people have already made up their minds.
What we do not know for sure is why and why.
Donald TrumpJoe Biden