THIS week's column is my fifth on American politics since the Donald was enshrined in the pantheon of America's celebrated villains as a convicted felon. The equivalent notorious personalities in American history — the likes of Benedict Arnold and Charles Manson, among others, come to mind. We will also discuss in passing the first debate between two old men, representing the best or worst of US politics; on one side, a senile aging warhorse, Biden; on the other, a cognitively impaired, compulsively lying Trump. Last Thursday's encounter was a battle of perception and one-upmanship. Biden was nowhere. From the start, his gait was slow, his voice was raspy, and his gaze was frozen, reinforcing his senility. Where was the energy?
On the other hand, there was Trump, aggressively in control of the conversation, with much energy spewing out the same old lies in sound bites, playing the artful dodger, not answering the questions directly but projecting an image of a winner, not a whiner. He won this one.
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