Disciplined

Of all the virtues, discipline is the most underrated. Yet it is the one that makes the others shine through.

We saw that earlier this week when Kamala Harris took complete control of the debate with Donald Trump. One viewer reaction sums it up well: she came with a laser pointer and had the former president chasing the red dot the whole time.

She took control of the stage from the moment she walked in. Kamala went over to Trump’s lectern and basically forced him to shake her hand.

From that moment on, she had Trump under her spell. Never once did Trump look in the direction of is rival – the one he called “dumb as a rock.” She constantly had him under her gaze, like a teacher observing her student during recitation. She had all the tools of non-verbal communication under her command.

In the days leading up to debate night, the Trump campaign mocked Kamala for taking time off to prepare for the event. But this was the correct thing to do for a historic moment. There is no substitute for preparation.

It turns out, according to Trump staffers, their candidate has been preparing for weeks – except that his preparation was sporadic and disorganized. When crunch time came, he neither had the intellectual competence nor that command of the situation to unload all the talk points given him.

The consensus among debate-watchers is that Kamala baited Trump to throw him off and dispose him to making outrageous statements. She managed to get under Trump’s skin by mocking his rallies. The Republican candidate has this enormous obsession with his crowd sizes. From then on, he had trouble wrestling back the conversation to fit his narrative.

Kamala Harris spent years serving as a prosecutor. That is invaluable training for thinking on your feet, mustering the logical force to sway a jury and using words with precision. The skills showed in her masterful performance during the debate.

Trump, by contrast, spent his whole life building and selling property. The skills involved there is selling things at the price you want. That often involves conning and grifting. These are not skills that will enable one to win a serious debate. These are skills that could land you with felony charges.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to mount a third party presidential campaign. When that failed to gain traction, he gave up on the effort and endorsed Trump instead.

Asked for his reaction to the debate, he admitted Kamala delivered a polished performance. But she was wanting in policy substance. That is negligible criticism, considering Trump flew off the handle claiming migrants were eating pets.

Presidential debates today are made-for-television events. The memorable 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon is believed to have defined the electoral outcome. Nixon, blissfuly unaware of the demands of what was then a new medium, did not put on make-up. On television, he appeared haggard and untrustworthy.

Television as a medium militates against elaboration. Television debates are, therefore, a game of soundbites and snappy delivery. One is constantly up against a very short audience attention span. Anyone who fails to throw in a new thought every 20 second loses the viewers.

Before the debate, Kamala was said to be worried about the event. Trump after all had long experience in television. He jumps out of the screen and developed the ability to to keep audiences glued. He knows how fleeting thoughts could be in a medium that was, after all, once nicknamed the “boob tube.”

But on debate night, Trump appeared bewildered. He looked old and senile. He quickly sought sanctuary in his old racist and misogynous formularies to run the clock.

This is what will stick in the minds of the 67 million viewers reported to have tuned in to the debate: a ruffled old man on the verge of senility, making wild and unfounded claims. It is not a heroic image.

Whatever his real infirmities might be, they have been magnified by his utter lack of discipline in preparing for the event. He did not rehearse his performance. He did not think through his attack lines. He did not try to figure out his opponent’s vulnerable points.

In a word: Trump thought he could simply wing it and deliver a passable performance.

He was never so wrong. One could not walk into a debate unprepared and expect a resounding victory. Anyone who has held down a real job knows this.

Surely, Trump staffers must have prepared a ton of attack lines and soundbites, the weapons needed to win a battle like this one. But he failed to dig into them. He failed to set up in order to deliver them.

Immediately after the debate closed, Trump walked over to the “spin room” where journalists were gathered. He tried to gaslight everybody by quoting strange numbers, claiming to have won the debate. Anyone who does this knows, deep inside, he lost.

Unfortunately, Trump’s disastrous performance does not mean he lost the elections. All the polls show that the race remains as tight as ever. Given the unique practices of US elections, the final outcome depends on the electoral college votes in a handful of “swing states.”

But that debate adds to Kamala’s momentum. She needs to widen what is now a razor-thin lead in the polling.