Mon, 10 Oct 2016 15:20
Donald Trump is a man who likes golf.
So is Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump is a man who likes to cheat at golf.
So is Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump is a man who likes voluptuous women.
So is Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump is a man who likes to talk a lot.
So is Bill Clinton.
Donald Trump is a man who likes junk food, especially McDonald's cheeseburgers and fries.
So was Bill Clinton, until he had to clean up his culinary act.
Trump had a few quibbles about Clinton's more catholic taste in women and his real estate bargaining skills.
How the friendship of the mighty had fallen.
The darkest, most lurid moment in modern debate history came just a few moments into the tense spectacle.
When Jeff from Ohio on Facebook asked about the ''Access Hollywood'' tape, Trump dived: ''If you look at Bill Clinton, it's far worse, mine were words, his were action. Never anybody in the history of this nation has been so abusive to women.''
Trump continued, saying that Hillary had attacked those same women ''viciously'' and that ''four of them are here tonight.''
Trump, who was nervously pacing as Hillary was glaring, noted that President Clinton was impeached, lost his license to practice law and had to pay an $850,000 fine to Paula Jones.
When Hillary rebutted, noting that you had to fact-check Trump '' which she did with a Freudian slip of ''fat-check'' '' and that no one with Trump's temperament should be in the Oval Office. Yes, Trump shot back, because if he was president, ''you'd be in jail.''
The former friendship between Trump and the Clintons was dead, once and for all.
When I interviewed him in 1999, when Bill was a disgraced but still popular president and Donald was a not-yet-disgraced plutocrat toying with the idea of running for president, Trump said this: ''He handled the Monica situation disgracefully. It's sad because he would go down as a great president if he had not had this scandal. People would have been more forgiving if he'd had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were on a different level. Now Clinton can't get into golf clubs in Westchester. A former president begging to get in a golf club. It's unthinkable.''
Trump also sniffed about the Clinton's new Chappaqua house: ''Very overpriced. I could have gotten him that house for $600,000 less.''
He was also unimpressed in those days with Ken Starr '-- ''Starr's a freak'' '-- and Hillary's Senate run. ''The concept of the listening tour is ridiculous. People want ideas. Do you think Winston Churchill, when he was stopping Hitler, went around listening?''
But it was inevitable that Bill and Donald, larger-than-life figures who both became shooting stars in the '80s, would find each other a decade and a half later when they were both living in New York.
Trump liked to be around powerful pols who might come in handy for business. And powerful pols liked to be around Trump, who might come in handy for donations.
And donate Trump did to the Clintons, both to the family foundation and to Hillary's Senate campaign. Over the years, he seemed to come to genuinely like and admire both Bill and Hillary, in a transactional sort of way, praising them in public statements, making Bill a member of his Westchester golf course, inviting the Clintons to his third wedding, to Melania Knauss, a sultry Slovenian model.
During the 2008 Democratic primary, Trump blogged: ''I know Hillary and I think she'd make a great president or vice president,'' and in 2015, he told Joe Scarborough that Bill was his favorite president, even though he believed that Bill's entanglements with ''sundry semi-beautiful women'' had dampened his success.
Up until he got in the race, Trump was friendly with the Clintons, even seeking Bill's advice in a phone call not long before he jumped in.
But once Trump saw Hillary within his sights, the friendship ended. As far as Trump was concerned, the Clintons were the enemy, and Monica and other sordid tales from Clintonworld were, as Trump put it, ''fair game.''
Last May, Trump began pummeling his former pals at a rally in Eugene, Ore. ''Nobody in this country was worse than Bill Clinton with women. He was a disaster. I mean, there's never been anybody like this and she was a total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives. I mean, have you ever read what Hillary Clinton did to the women that Bill Clinton had affairs with? And they're going after me with women. Give me a break, folks.''
At a rally in Fairfield, Conn., in mid-August, Trump brought up ''that woman,'' noting: ''I'm so glad they kept that dress. It shows what the hell they are.''
Bill, who was still popular despite the rocky patches with Monica and the Marc Rich pardon, was angry when Trump began dragging back the old scandals over women into the spotlight.
After Trump began to slide, following his nutty focus on former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, in the first debate, he ignored warnings from fellow Republicans and unleashed a scorpion attack on the Clintons' treatment of women, directing surrogates to use this talking point: ''Mr. Trump has never treated women the way Hillary Clinton and her husband did when they worked to destroy Bill Clinton's accusers.''
At a New Hampshire rally a few days after the debate, Trump said: ''The Clintons are the sordid past. We will be the very bright and clean future.''
When the scuzzy Billy Bush ''Access Hollywood'' tape was leaked, Trump first tried to brush it off as private ''locker room banter.'' Cornered, the pouty plutocrat lashed out, like a bag of raccoons. So in his initial statement to David Fahrenthold, who broke the story in The Washington Post, Trump immediately tried to shift blame, writing: ''Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course '-- not even close.''
Trump had told me in an interview last June over lunch at Trump Tower that the two men had fun discussing women as they golfed.
But then the whole country got rabidly consumed and the press began covering the story as though a fiery orange comet was hitting the earth. The vice president tweeted that Trump was guilty of sexual assault, and Republicans began fleeing their nominee in droves, like ''rats running across the tundra,'' as the late, great Hunter Thompson used to say.
By Sunday, many Republicans and even the Wall Street Journal editorial board were saying Trump should think about dropping out, because as the paper said, ''the goal has to be to save a G.O.P. Congress.''
So Trump went nuclear, in the sort of nuclear policy he understands. He held a news conference in St. Louis before the debate with Clinton accusers: Juanita Broaddrick, who claims Bill Clinton raped her; Paula Jones, who got a $850,000 settlement to drop a sexual harassment claim against Bill Clinton; Kathleen Willey, who claims that Clinton, as president, assaulted her when she was a White House volunteer; and Kathy Shelton of Arkansas, whose alleged rapist was defended by Hillary Rodham and had complaints about what she saw as Hillary's subsequent lack of empathy.
Trump probably succeeded in rattling Hillary in the hour before the debate. But he also rattled Republicans, who found the scene desperate, dark and not exactly the shift to issues and contrition they were hoping for.
Unfortunately, the four things Trump needs to do well tonight are the four things he doesn't have: empathy, impulse control, humility and genuine regret.
This post was updated to reflect developments during the debate.
PhotoDonald Trump praying with church leaders last Wednesday in Las Vegas.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesByPeter Wehner
2016-10-09T19:57:51-04:00October 9, 20167:57 PM ETDespite everything that has happened over the past few days, or for that matter the last 15 months, there is one group that has been rock solid in its support of Donald Trump: religious conservatives.
Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, the Rev. Robert Jeffress and Ralph Reed have all restated their support for Trump in light of the release of a videotape that shows him to be not only lewd but a sexual predator. ''A ten-year-old tape of a private conversation with a talk show host ranks low on their hierarchy of concerns,'' Reed said, about people of faith.
Immediately after the release of the videotape, Eric Metaxas, an influential Evangelical biographer and radio talk show host, decided to make light of the whole thing in a Tweet: ''BREAKING: Trump caught using foul language, combing his hair oddly. Could this be the end of his campaign?'' (Metaxas later deleted the tweet, claiming he was ''unaware of the details'' of the story, despite having tweeted about it.)
So this is what is distinctive about Christian involvement in American politics today: leading evangelical leaders standing by their man, regardless of how depraved and misogynistic he is. Those who for decades have spoken about the importance of character in public leaders, lamented the degraded state of our culture and worried about the human cost of the sexual revolution are the most reliable defenders of a man whose life is a moral cesspool.
Which raises this question before tonight's debate: What could they possibly be listening for now? What could Trump do that would shake their support for him?
When Trump said last January, ''I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters,'' it was not yet clear that the group he could most rely on was religious conservatives.
But Trump's repulsive videotaped conversation is not an aberration; it is instead the personification of his attitudes toward (among other things) women and wedding vows. It is only the latest link '-- and not the last one '-- in a long, ugly chain.
Some of us have been warning since shortly after Trump entered the campaign that this was what we could expect from him. Whatever else Trump can be faulted for, he did not hide who he was. The cruelty, the misogyny, the appeals to nativism and racism, the disordered personality were all on vivid display. And yet many Republicans simply shrugged. They deluded themselves and tried to delude others into believing this wasn't who Trump really was. Or, if it was, they assured us that he would change. But Trump has stayed true to himself.
One other thing needs to be said. It is not as if evangelicals, in embracing Trump, did so because he was a committed and articulate advocate for the causes they care about most. Quite the opposite. Trump is a late and cynical convert to many causes that are important to them. It is a fantasy to pretend that as president he would expend effort on their behalf. Trump would betray them as he betrays everyone. The allegiance of Christian conservatives, and the hypocrisy it required, was won for virtually nothing in return.
If religious conservatives who still support him do end up abandoning him, it will be because of a power calculation '-- because they view him as an inevitable loser, not because they see him as an offense, as a person unworthy of their support and unfit to be president. At that point, their abandonment of Trump won't much matter. The damage already done to them and their faith witness cannot be contained. We reap what we sow.
Peter Wehner served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.
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Out of the nine presidential campaigns I've covered, I've never seen anything as absurd as the motley crew of Trump advisers agonizing over how to delicately, in soothing tones, tiptoe up to the proudly uninformed megalomaniac and broach the topic of more rigorous debate prep.
Maureen Dowd, in ''Donald Goes to the Dogs.''
2016-10-09T19:57:58-04:00October 9, 20167:57 PM ETShare This Page
PhotoThe rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building.Credit Doug Mills/The New York TimesByMaureen Dowd
2016-10-09T19:27:48-04:00October 9, 20167:27 PM ETOne day, back in the late 50s, my father, flanked by my brother, was standing in the hall of the Capitol with a congressman and some of his staffers.
Mike Dowd, a strapping Catholic Washington D.C. police inspector born in County Clare, Ireland, was in charge of Senate security for 13 years and Michael, my oldest brother, was working his way through law school as a Capitol elevator operator.
The congressman began to tell a dirty joke. My dad raised his hand.
''Stop,'' Mike Dowd said. ''Go say a Hail Mary.'' Then he sauntered away with Michael in tow.
Young Michael was a brainiac, with a Google memory before Google, who rarely lavished praise. But he always recounted that story about my dad with great pride.
Someone should have told Donald J. Trump long ago to go say a Hail Mary when he started to say something smutty. Maybe then, the cheesy and cheddar-colored billionaire wouldn't be reaping the whirlwind tonight, figuring out how to throw a Hail Mary pass to save his teetering candidacy, shore up his cowering party and salvage whatever is left of his brand.
''Everything Trump touches dies,'' Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant, told The Washington Post's Phil Rucker.
Trump has had an apocalyptic effect on the nation. Those who know him well describe being friends with ''a hurricane.'' And for 16 months, the Republican Party, Trump's ever-shifting cast of advisers and at times, the media, have all been handcuffed to this hurricane.
He has changed everything about politics. There were some good things in the beginning, like when he turned over the golden apple cart of political hucksters, showing that you can make it without a lot of high-priced mercenaries and a couple hundred million dollars worth of negative ads.
But then came the avalanche of dreadful things: the bigotry, the xenophobia, the misogyny, the violence at rallies, the profane language, the vile epithets and uncontrollable vindictiveness. (I feel I got off easy being labeled merely a wacky, crazy, neurotic dope by Trump.)
This weekend was the Republican Party's version of ''Murder on the Orient Express:'' a passel of lawmakers and other G.O.P. luminaries who have been insulted, belittled and politically undermined by Trump joining with lethal coordination to stick the knife in their indefensible nominee '-- death by a thousand cuts and defections.
But it will be hard for Republicans who waited this long to justify their cowardice in not distancing themselves sooner. The magnitude of the Republican Party's ''disgrace'' is almost impossible to articulate, Steve Schmidt, who helped run John McCain's campaign in 2008, said on ''Meet the Press'' today.
This year with Trump, he said, we have seen ''these candidates who have repeatedly put their party ahead of their country, denying what is so obviously clear to anybody who's watching about his complete and total, manifest unfitness for this office.''
As repulsive as the new tape is, with Trump giving Billy Bush his philosophy of pawing and pouncing, it is not a shocker.
Trump has always talked like a guy in a steam bath at the Sands Casino in Vegas in 1959. And he has always been surrounded by seamy enablers like Billy Bush, who insisted the poor soap opera actress meeting their bus give Trump a hug, even though Trump didn't seem to want one any more than she did.
Trump's defense, given to Robert Costa in Saturday's Washington Post, sounded like it could have been a wintry Sinatra lament: ''I've been here before, I'll tell ya, in life. I understand life and how you make it through. You go through things. I've been through many. It's called life. And it's always interesting.'' (In ''That's Life,'' Sinatra sings, summing up Trump's defiance: ''I thought of quitting, baby, but my heart just ain't gonna buy it.'')
Indeed, the braggart billionaire is blinking in shock that he is suddenly getting called on the carpet for the retrograde behavior he has exhibited his whole life '' first as a real estate showboat, then as a TV star, and for the last year as a short-fingered vulgarian in over his head, trying '' and failing '' to morph into an even-keeled pol.
The Trumpster, as he calls himself, has always just been going for the roar of the crowd, first as a chauvinist pig with Howard Stern and then as an un-P.C. bigot with angry white voters. He always says he doesn't see himself as a sexist or racist, not fathoming that you are what you say as you try to win the moment.
How on earth did we get to the ludicrous point where not one but two candy companies had to distance themselves from the Trump campaign? First Skittles, after Don Jr. crassly compared a bowl of Skittles to refugees, and then Tic Tacs, after Trump told Bush, as they went to promote a Trump cameo on ''Days of Our Lives,'' how he liked to pop some Tic Tacs before kissing women he found beautiful. (You know you're in trouble as a groping Republican when Arnold Schwarzenegger distances himself.)
How on earth did we get to the preposterous place where Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire senator running for re-election, had to eat her own words calling the nominee of her party a role model?
In the end, Donald Trump's legacy '' aside from destroying the Republican Party, ensuring Hillary Clinton's election and guaranteeing through his ego meltdowns that the first African-American president's record is not erased by the first overtly racist candidate in modern times '' may be hastening the coarsening of society. He presided over the merger of politics with social media, reality TV and wrestling extravaganzas.
Plus, he managed to change not one but two semantic policies of The New York Times. We began using the word ''lie'' about politicians who tell big fat whoppers. (If I could only tell you how many times I had to look up synonyms for ''lie'' when I was covering Dick Cheney's heinous fictions justifying invading Iraq.)
And, in order to capture the creepy offense of the ''Access Hollywood'' open-mike tape, The Times felt it had to use some vulgarities for the first time in its 165-year history.
I have a message from my late dad for Donald J. Trump: As you make your Hail Mary pass tonight, when you think of diving into the gutter, say a Hail Mary.
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PhotoDonald Trump gesturing to a crowd at a campaign rally.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York TimesByThe Editors
2016-10-09T16:22:46-04:00October 9, 20164:22 PM ETHave you, as a woman, faced treatment like Donald Trump describes? Have you, as a man, talked the way Donald Trump did, or listened to men talking that way? We asked readers to respond on Facebook. Here's a sampling what they said, edited for length and clarity.
Have I? That's like asking have I ever breathed air. I have been groped in public, been exposed to, demanded by married men that I should date them. Twice physically attacked in very scary ways. I'm not going into detail in a public forum. To hear this ''locker room'' excuse just infuriates me. Stop making excuses, this is reality everyday. Trump is a criminal.'--Guinevere Shaw Smith
Um, as a man, yes. Spent 12 years in the Army with various deployments. If Trump's comments offend you, don't go to a military barracks, especially all male ones, on a weekend night.'--Tom Barnes
I was pinched on the breast by a coworker who seemed to think it was funny. I was young and didn't report the incident but I still remember the humiliation of 40-plus years ago.'--Brenda Crosby Bouser
As a male who was raised by a strong and independent woman, I would like to respond to this. Have I spoken like this? Yes I have, when I was a teenage boy who had no experience with women in relationships, and as a very young adult in the military, who was ''just trying to fit in''. As a kid I said these things before my mother corrected and taught me the concepts of respect and decency. That said, at 28 I would find it unacceptable to speak like this. By 70 years old, anyone who speaks like this proves what has already been said about him, he is a sexist narcissist who is only concerned with promoting himself, and that he has no respect for anybody but himself.'--Tyrone Newsom
At the very least, there is probably not a woman alive who has not, to her own shame, used the ''I have a boyfriend'' excuse - because sometimes declaring yourself to be the property of another man is the only thing these cretins comprehend as a viable form of ''no.'''--Nancy Lloyd Van Whitbeck
I have never heard any comments like this over a lifetime of many different jobs. Not once.'--Mark Scott
By the time I was eighteen this had happened many times. I never talked about it because I felt ashamed. It stopped happening in my 30's so I guess it's something mainly done to young women. I'm glad it's identified as sexual assault now.'--Lorraine Adler
I have never spoken about women the way Trump did. I have worked with women who spoke about men in ''colorful'' ways, but of course, they were feminists, and if men can use locker room speak then, by God, so could they.'--Patrick Barbieri
I have not had the ''pussy'' grab, but trying to kiss me forcibly? Yes. My buttocks pinched/grabbed dozens of times. I don't mind a whistle, but dirty, nasty comments as I walk past total strangers have made me nervous. I have a younger coworker that has received a ''dick pic'' from about 80% of the twenty somethings she has met. It starts in high school when the ''boys'' try to cop a cheap feel on your chest. I do not lament being a married, middle aged woman with children. I'm finally left alone.'--Tara Murphy
I've heard men talk that way before when I was a member of a fraternity. I always rebuked them, and they never spoke that way in front of me again. I find it reprehensible, and I simply don't tolerate it around me.'--Erik Czerwin
The reality is nearly every woman has been sexually marginalized by a man or men at some point in her life. She has been objectified and had unwanted, uncomfortable cat-calls and whistles thrown at her, she has been demeaned because of her sex. She has had to work twice as hard as her male coworkers to be deemed half as good. She has been groped or touched without her consent, she has been told all she needs is a ''good F___'' to straighten out her attitude, she has had men unapologetically speak to her boobs.'--Elizabeth Brandon Warner
As teens and young guys in college we would talk about girls but it was all about how sexy they were; ''great legs'', ''nice butt'' , ''big boobs'' it was immature and stupid. In my entire life ( I am 71) I have never heard anyone talking about grabbing a woman's pussy against her will or forcing himself on a woman.'--Cornelio Nouel
The first job I ever had, at 17, I was fired because I wouldn't have sex with the boss. And the 2nd. Most women I know have these stories.'--Connie Reynolds
Before I became married, I'm sure I was a schmuck.'--Sid Bodhi
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In the early 1590s, Shakespeare sat down to write a play that addressed a problem: How could a great country wind up being governed by a sociopath?
Stephen Greenblatt, in ''Shakespeare Explains the 2016 Election.''
2016-10-09T19:44:33-04:00October 9, 20167:44 PM ETShare This Page
PhotoDonald Trump being shadowed by John Wayne at a campaign event in Iowa.Credit Eric Thayer for The New York TimesBySusan Chira
2016-10-09T16:22:40-04:00October 9, 20164:22 PM ETIs Donald Trump a real man?
He certainly wants us to think he is. He lives in a gilded man cave, glued to the TV screen, chomping down junk food and hanging out with bodacious models and beauty pageant contestants.
He loves to brag about his sexual prowess. In military school, he cultivated his reputation as a ladies' man. He reminded us on live television that he has big hands '' and not just big hands. As the video released Friday told us in all too graphic detail, he thinks he's irresistible to women and entitled to force himself on them.
But is this how real men talk when they're with each other, in the locker room, in the bar, in Wall Street bacchanals? And is this how real men act? Certainly a lot of women believe that's the case (or have themselves endured harassment and assault), and the video allowed them to be voyeurs into a frat-boy world. A lot of men are rushing to assure them otherwise.
One of the heartbreaking things about the Trump video is how many women see it as confirmation that this is just how men talk. We don't. @matthewteague
A parade of Republicans has dissociated themselves from such behavior, and men interviewed across the country said Mr. Trump had crossed a line.
More broadly, this election raises the question of what vision of masculinity Americans are going to endorse. Mr. Trump's version clearly resonates with a segment of the American electorate. He tells it like it is. He gets results. Take that, political correctness police.
In the primary, he scored by unmanning his opponents. He mocked them as wimps and effete elites (Jeb Bush), too weak to get through a debate without water (Marco Rubio) and '' the ultimate insult '' not manly enough to attract beautiful women (Ted Cruz).
Even his mangled syntax can be seen as manly. ''Part of Trump's appeal is that he's inarticulate,'' said Jackson Katz, the author of ''Man Enough? Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity.'' ''He seems more real,'' as opposed to the intellectuals that Republicans have long dismissed as weak.
More substantively, Mr. Trump talks about Making America Great Again, a case he is sure to make in tonight's second debate. With his rejection of free trade, his resolve to build a wall to keep out immigrants and his swagger, he conjures an America where a man still gets good pay for an honest day's work. That man could provide for his family so his wife could afford to stay home. In this America, men don't face competition from immigrants or women for jobs. In this America, white men are restored to their dominant place in the economy, politics and the home.
Polling consistently shows that Mr. Trump has commanding majorities among white men without a college education. ''It's much more difficult now to say I'm a real man,'' said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of ''Labor's Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America.'' ''I take care of my family. I don't ask for any favors. That was their identity and it was based on a job with a decent wage.''
But in other ways, Mr. Trump is a caricature, even a distortion, of American masculinity. Scholars point to an enduring ideal of American manhood, epitomized by the Western '-- the strong, silent and chivalrous man. Gary Cooper in High Noon. Alan Ladd in Shane. ''The cowboy types that show up in our imagination would have nothing to do with Trump,'' said Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and gender at Stony Brook University and the author of ''Angry White Men.'' ''He's not a man who's done a lick of real work in his life. Let's see you change a tire. Masculinity in America has always been something that you prove with your hands '' not the size of your actual hands.''
Paul Ryan touched on this alternate ideal of manhood in his denunciation of Mr. Trump's words (if not of his candidacy) late Friday. ''Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified,'' he said. This in itself can be seen as retrograde, of course '' feminists having fought long and hard to move away from the Victorian ideal that women need to be protected and worshipped.
Notably, many Republicans who denounced Mr. Trump over the weekend did so in similar chivalric mode. Mitt Romney said anyone with a daughter could not support Mr. Trump. Jeb Bush spoke about his granddaughters. Striving to be sensitive, they nonetheless still cast women as objects, not as peers.
Despite the protestations, sexual entitlement '-- in words and deeds '-- runs deep in American culture. Stanley Kowalski, in Marlon Brando's indelible portrayal in A Streetcar Named Desire, is another trope of American manhood. We don't even have to look that far back. Even now, a string of professional and college athletes, celebrated as the epitome of manliness, have beaten, abused and raped women, often with impunity.
The aggression that characterizes Mr. Trump's words and behavior is both a reflection and a cartoonish exaggeration of traditional masculinity. That very ideal of what it is to be a man has been under assault for generations. Feminists would argue '' contrary to the emotional experience of many of Mr. Trump's supporters '-- that reimagining the role of women does not demean or constrain men. Rather, the feminists say, it liberates them.
A men's movement, championed by Mr. Katz among others, suggests that there are new ways to define being an American man '-- most notably by acting against sexual harassment but also by freeing men from the emotional straightjacket the Western trope imposed.
This election presents many choices. Now it may also determine which version of manhood we believe in '' or what we choose to invent going forward.
Susan Chira is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times.
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PhotoHillary Clinton at a town hall meeting last week in Pennsylvania.Credit Todd Heisler/The New York TimesByJennifer Weiner
2016-10-09T14:57:35-04:00October 9, 20162:57 PM ETTonight, we'll watch Hillary Clinton do the unprecedented. She will stand on the stage, for a presidential debate, alongside a man who was caught on tape in 2005 talking about women in terms that were ''vulgar'' (NPR), ''extremely lewd'' (The Washington Post) or predatory, threatening and emblematic of rape culture (my mom, my sister, Twitter).
How will she do it, knowing that her thin-skinned and peevish opponent is ready to answer any charge of misogyny or misbehavior by saying that anything he thought or said pales in comparison to what Bill Clinton has done, and that Mrs. Clinton, his ''enabler,'' has had his back, and sought to tear down the women who accused him?
For the length of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton has struggled to find her voice, her persona, to find a way to be, while everything from her expression (to smile or not to smile?) to her tone (shouty!) to her laugh to her fashion choices has been weighed and found wanting.
Friends insist that, in private, Mrs. Clinton is a lovely person '-- warm and loyal, with a sharp sense of humor. In public, however, she's long been caricatured as Tracy Flick from the 1999 movie ''Election,'' the cold, ickily ambitious would-be high school president.
But there's a more accurate cinematic comparison, one whose voice and choices might show Mrs. Clinton a path out of this sinkhole.
Maybe it's just because it's one of my favorite movies, but I've been thinking about the 1987 film ''Broadcast News'' a lot, imagining, instead of Hillary as Tracy, Hillary as Holly Hunter's Jane Craig, the accomplished, neurotic-but-charming female lead of the movie's love triangle.
Jane is a hard-charging news producer, a woman so driven that she schedules time to cry, by far the smartest person in any room. We see her lecturing her colleagues about the value of hard news over fluff and vulnerable as she ends a relationship with a handsome news anchor after he's caught on tape playing fast and loose with the truth. It's a hard choice that leaves her lonely, but with her self-respect intact.
Which brings us to tonight.
Mrs. Clinton won the last debate by keeping her head while Mr. Trump frothed and rambled; by being the calm adult coolly staring down a petulant little boy.
This weekend, hunkered down in his gilded penthouse, explaining away his creepy, predatory ways by saying that 2005 was a long time ago (it wasn't) and that the words don't reflect who he is (they do), Mr. Trump has made it clear that his plan is to go big on little-boy tactics.
''Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims,'' he said. It's a diversion familiar to any parent who's ever heard, ''Why are you so mad at me for spilling my milk, when Trevor broke the pitcher?''
When Mr. Trump tries to pin Bill Clinton's misdeeds, actual and alleged, on Mrs. Clinton, she needs to point out which Clinton is running for office. She must address her own hard choices, and the price she's paid, and then take voters out of the Clinton presidency and back to the boys on the bus.
And she needs to keep the stakes at the forefront. In ''Broadcast News,'' there's a scene in which Albert Brooks, playing a news reporter with a crush on Jane and an unfortunate tendency to sweat on camera, calls his romantic rival the devil. When Jane objects, Mr. Brooks's character says that Satan won't show up in an obvious way: ''He will be attractive. He'll be nice and helpful. He'll get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation. He'll never do an evil thing! He'll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He will just bit by little bit lower our standards where they are important.''
Words like ''nice and helpful'' do not pop immediately to one's mind when considering Mr. Trump. But that last part?
The Republican nominee's leering, threatening language, the way that on the tape, with Billy Bush's chuckling complicity, he turns an actress from a person to an ''it,'' the way he maintains that, for a ''star,'' women are not people as much as a serve-yourself flesh buffet, all of that has lowered our standards where they are important, not just a little, but a lot.
At the Democratic National Convention, and throughout her campaign, Mrs. Clinton made much of that shattered glass ceiling, about the power and responsibility that go with being the only woman on the stage. Tonight, though, she'd be better served by focusing not on gender but on maturity; by telling voters that they have a choice not between a man and a woman, or even a Republican and a Democrat, but between an entitled child and a seasoned, scarred adult.
Jennifer Weiner is the author of the memoir ''Hungry Heart,'' and a contributing opinion writer.
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PhotoFinal preparations for the second presidential debate are underway in St. Louis, Missouri.Credit Doug Mills/The New York TimesByThe Editors
2016-10-09T14:13:06-04:00October 9, 20162:13 PM ETNot everyone likes to do debate prep, but here on the opinion pages, this is what we live for. Maureen Dowd asked how it came to this; Nick Kristof looked at Donald Trump's qualifications to be groper in chief; Lindy West argued that women needed to grab Republicans where it hurt, at the ballot box; Ross Douthat considered the many faces of illiberalism today; Molly Worthen showed how a rift on the religious left helps explain Hillary Clinton's problem consolidating the Democratic base; Katha Pollitt revealed what the vice-presidential debate (remember that?) told us what can and can't be said about abortion; Vanessa Williamson showed that Americans feel deeply about paying their taxes and not necessarily in the way that you think; Jacques Leslie demonstrated how voter confusion over photo ID laws was just as dangerous as the laws themselves; and Tom Edsall imagined the global economy according to Mr. Trump.
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PhotoJohn McCain on Capitol Hill.Credit Al Drago/The New York TimesByGail Collins
2016-10-09T13:28:10-04:00October 9, 20161:28 PM ETListen, your weekend could be worse. You could be in charge of explaining Donald J. Trump.
''He speaks the way many times people talk around their dining room table,'' protested Corey Lewandowski, the former aide turned TV commentator. Lewandowski's done a lot of unlovely things this election season, but I still do not believe that when he goes home to have a meal with the family, the conversation turns around grabbing women's private parts.
What are you supposed to say when your extremely dicey presidential candidate shows up on a tape bragging about how he's so famous he can molest any woman he wants? We will turn first to that pacesetter Sean Hannity. ''I think King David had 500 concubines, for crying out loud,'' said the ''Fox News'' host.
This is not a promising route, given the fact that the Bible says King David also seduced Bathsheba and killed her husband, Uriah the Hittite. Unless Hannity was planning to close with ''at least he didn't murder anybody.''
The less imaginative defenders often fell back on the argument that the super-sexist tape was really old '' eleven years! ''I've seen a different man in the last year and a half,'' said Rudy Giuliani on his whirlwind tour of Sunday morning TV. Give the man credit '' while most Trump surrogates were hiding in their beds, Rudy was on the air everywhere. Truly, if you had turned on HGTV, I'll bet you'd have seen him pop up on an episode of ''Fixer Upper,'' advising hapless homeowners that they needed granite kitchen countertops and more faith in the Republican nominee. Giuliani's argument was that running for president changes you for the better. It was an interesting point, particularly when made by a man whose own shot at the White House helped transform him from America's Mayor to a super-scary talking head.
And pity the innocent bystanders. After her husband made one of the worst apologies in history '-- really, he looked like a hostage being forced to confess to war crimes by the Taliban '-- poor Melania issued a statement saying that the infamous Trump Tape ''does not represent the man that I know. He has the heart and mind of a leader.'' On the plus side, it was definitely not language cribbed from Michelle Obama.
No way to get around this one. Except for the New Republican Dodge, in which candidates announce that they cannot possibly support a person who says such awful things. (Who imagined? No idea!) But then of course there's no way they'd vote for Hillary Clinton. And so they're going to '... do something else. Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire announced she'd be ''writing in Governor Pence for president on Election Day.'' You have to feel sorry for the woman. She's in a very tough re-election battle. Last week someone asked Ayotte if Trump was a good model for children, and she got into big trouble for saying yes. Politicians can't always depend on the top of the ticket to pull them up, but it isn't often that someone has to retract an affirmation that her party's presidential candidate was someone kids could look up to.
However, this business of saying you're not going to vote for anybody real is awful. John McCain announced he's going to write in an unnamed ''good conservative Republican'' '-- he won't even name anybody. The news release should go something like this: ''Senator X today announced that he has decided to throw away his vote and spend Election Day sulking in a special yurt that will be erected specifically for the purpose of celebrating Americans' right to let somebody else make the hard decisions.''
Suck it up, Senator. Make a choice.
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