Presidential Debates: Harris Over Trump
by Bruce Piasecki, author of World Inc, Doing More with Less, and Wealth and Climate Competitiveness: The New Narrative on Business and Society
While my feelings are still young, please enjoy this set of impressions regarding last night’s Presidential debate. I hope you reply by filing your reactions to the debate, and to these five points.
While I am no expert, and a mere social historian writing books for a living and running a corporation for four decades, here are my five initial impressions:
- For the first time in almost a decade (since 2014), the TV hosts were smart fast fact checkers, noting when Trump lied about immigrants eating neighbor’s dogs. Both the male host and the female host were prepared, alert, and corrective whenever the aspiring politicians on either side fibbed or straight out lied. TV becamse post Trump last night.
This is refreshening to see again.
The hosting TV station, and the subsequent coverage thru the night, kept the debate on race, the January 6 assault, Trump’s former lies, the promise of America, and the strength in our standing in the world.
They caught Harris in a few exaggerations, exactly like we find in historic leaders like Churchill, Lincoln and Reagan when we look close. There was no warmth nor vision in Trump. When I ask the smart women and staffers in my firm about these above American and global issues, and the larger set of sources to my books on globalization and competition, they quietly look out the window, and say: “Harris and Tim, they are about family, the future, and our children.”
2. For the first time since 2020, when the big lie shattered the history of the Republican party I once served and embraced, Trump looked very old, dated, and without policies. All he was able to do is deny the Heritage foundations 2025 report. He seemed stunned, and inflexible before the hand-shaking, and free, Kamala Harris. A new TV world got to see her in action. She was fresh, proud, presidential and alert to nuance.
3. While the New York Times this morning featured their Weds September 11 left column on how “Trump Embraces Tariffs As a Cure for Wider Needs”, they actually fact-checked his claims by recreating the trade experts that question the value in Trump’s keep America isolated tariffs. No foreign country pays a tariff; Americans pay as consumers the higher 20 percent. In recent months, even the New York Times became passive in the shadow of the assault on facts and economic expertise. But today’s Times is right on regarding the debate, and the weakness in the RNC’s embrace of tariffs. Again, the press is showing its chops in taking on Trump TV.
4. It is known and still evident that aggressive “tarriffs”, thru history, cause a backlash that backfires on the American consumer.
In today’s more globalized economy, Trump’s isolationist claims give key foreign governments like China and Russia and Asia a chance to retaliate against US interests in the world global economy. From cars and computers, to innovation and the fate of energy, this is not only weak and wrong but dumb. As a social historian I have reason to believe that the great middle and voting public voting public will see thru the claims on tariffs, and how weak he and R.D Vance appear when talking about tariffs. She got him off message by calling it what she did. A cost to the middle class.
5. Finally, the Wall Street Journal punts the story about the debate by saying see coverage on WSJ.com. It was a late night, for sure, but they could have drafted something in advance, that the WSJ could have filed like the New York Times. We will have to wait to see how the BBC, the Guardian, and the other great outlets of our world report the results. Yet over all, in posture and substance, Harris stood over Trump.
As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal book bestseller, I see TV now — and such debates — as useful but not critical moments in social history. TV sums up the candidates trends, reveals their underlying personalities and tendencies. Trump sides with hate, and Harris with democracy, joy and turning the page into a global future.
For example, in the summary minute, Trump was so rattled by Harris that he did not sum up, said nothing again about climate change, and was left hanging on his hateful harangue. Look over the 90 minutes again, he raged in a repetitive and inconsequential manner against ever punch she landed in the prior minutes. He spent a third of the time attacking Bidden.
You can think of the feeling as Trump fighting from the gutter, but Harris kicking high. As a social historian, I sense where the female and youth vote is heading. The others need to vote their conscience.
Kamala Harris had the best line of the night: “When it comes to foreign affairs, Sir, you are both wrong and weak.” Of course, she was well prepared, citing what he had said about Putin thru the yeras, the Korean and other dictators, as strong men. Is America willing to embrace a strong women in power? I am wedded to the idea that we are. The choice is clear.
