Trump Beats Expectations

He was better early, she was better late. Better to be better early.

Donald Trump dominated the first few minutes of Monday's debate by casting Hillary Clinton as the embodiment of Washington politics and the failed policies that have led us to this point. He set a trap for her when he asked why if she's been in politics for so long, she's only coming up with good solutions now. Clinton walked right into it, describing how long she's been proposing good solutions and pointing to her time in the Senate, to her policy papers on her website, to the campaign book she wrote, to the 1990s. She responded to his attacks on NAFTA and the TPP with a meager defense of the former and a flip-flop on the latter.

She improved as the night wore on, however, and he was flagging after the first half hour or so. He was often incoherent in policy, as usual, and when he offered some clarity it was worrisome, such as when he said again that the United States should "take the oil" of lands where we fought wars or when he said on "child care and so many other things—Hillary and I agree on that." Among those other things is Clinton's proposal, championed by Barack Obama, to prohibit anyone on any government terror watch list from purchasing a gun.

She put him on the defensive on taxes and his businesses, and rather than deflecting those attacks and turning them to her, he engaged on her terms and defended himself at length. Clinton's answer speculating about the reasons for his failure to release his returns was very effective—and Trump never directly denied that he hadn't paid taxes. Trump was a mess on the tax question in general, saying a) that he's be happy to release his returns, b) that he couldn't release his returns during an audit, c) that he's been under continuous audit for 15 years, d) he'd release them if she released her emails.

Trump's other failure was one of omission and missed opportunity. He didn't hit her on Benghazi when Libya came up, and, most egregiously, he didn't hit her on her private server when Lester Holt asked about cybersecurity.