All of the talking heads have been screeching about the dumpster fire/train wreck/sh*t show we all saw last night. Maybe they should have read the rules set by the Commission For Presidential Debates and agreed to by both the Trump and Biden campaigns. This is exactly what the Commission set up.

Victory Girls’ Deanna wrote up a quick summary of the slugfest last night. You MUST read it here. I know this is not a popular opinion, but I loved it. Every minute. I don’t enjoy the polite, tea and crumpets type debates. BORING! They have all these disgruntled, white women voters kvetching that they didn’t learn anything about policy positions. These are supposedly the college educated, white, suburban women voters that both candidates are dying to have. Girls, I suppose you can read. You want to know policy positions, both candidates have websites. You can read white papers to your hearts’ content. And, one more thing, if you don’t know the difference between the Republican and Democrat Party positions by now, please don’t vote. There’s one more unpopular opinion I hold. Ignorant people shouldn’t vote.

The debates have never been about policy positions for me. The debates are about body positions and facial expressions, and seeing the candidates side by side. Think back to that first Republican Presidential Debate back in 2016. Donald Trump ruled the room. JEB! looked like he was there to pick up coffee for the team.

At the first debate, Donald Trump was Donald Trump and Joe Biden was Joe Biden. The media went bat-sh*t crazy. France 24 has a nice wrap-up of the media, in English. You just have to watch the first few minutes:

Mika Brzezinski was Mika:

You can’t have the president projectile vomiting lies out with no fact checking and no moderating. That was not a debate. Biden was great. The campaign should say NO on any more debates. No need to lower themselves ever again.

— Mika Brzezinski (@morningmika) September 30, 2020

So, why did we see what we see? Easy peasy, because the Commission for Presidential Debates set the rules for the debate and both parties agreed to the rules. From the New York Times:

The Commission on Presidential Debates has divided the 90-minute event, the first of three presidential debates in the coming weeks, into six 15-minute segments. Mr. Wallace has selected six broad topics: Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s political records, the Supreme Court, the coronavirus, the economy, race and violence in cities, and the integrity of the election.

Mr. Wallace will begin each segment with a question. The person asked the question will have two minutes to respond, and the candidates will then have time to respond to each other.

So, give Chris Wallace takes a minute to ask his question. Donald Trump and Joe Biden each get two minutes to answer. That adds up to five minutes in old math. That means that there are ten minutes for verbal jousting. The Commission for Presidential Debates got exactly what they bargained for in the rules. The Commission got a train wreck. The media and Liberals got the opportunity to whinge about the death of civility and how horrible Donald Trump is. Why should Trump have stood there and let Biden lie and obfuscate. Trump gonna Trump and that’s why some of us voted for him. We want someone to stand up to the Washington Swamp Critters.

Personally, I favor a steel cage death match. Instead, we got three septuagenarian white men shouting at each. Given the absolute dearth of enjoyable television at night, it worked for me.

If everyone else wants a different show, then they need to write different rules. It’s that easy.

Featured Image: Ruperto Miller/Flickr.com/cropped/Public Domain