Sep 27, 2016 3 min read

The conventional wisdom over the last month or so, as Hillary Clinton lost ground in polls, is that Donald Trump had at last found discipline.

Since the end of August, Trump had kept the outrageous insults to a minimum, hadn’t suggested that “Second Amendment remedies” be applied to his opponent, hadn’t urged the Russians to hack into the United States’ computer systems or encouraged supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters at his rallies. Maybe, just maybe, some undecided voters could have been thinking, Trump was blossoming into a more steady and reliable leader who could pass muster as president.

If that was in fact the gist of their thinking, those vague notions should have been vanquished with extreme prejudice during Monday night’s presidential debate.

Where to begin? To put it bluntly, Trump turned in a jaw-droppingly wretched performance. It was enough to make his supporters break out in a cold sweat, make Republicans who were reluctant to make him their standard-bearer wish they could go back in time and nominate Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, anyone but Trump, and, perhaps most importantly, make fence-sitting voters come to the conclusion that Trump is beyond instruction or control. It reinforced the worst fears many Americans have about Trump – that he would not only be woefully out of his depth in the Oval Office, but that he also sorely lacks the temperament to be commander in chief and have the nuclear launch codes within his reach.

Writing for the Huffington Post, political analyst Howard Fineman, a native of Pittsburgh, argued Trump’s performance was historic, calling it “the worst – and I mean worst – debate performance in modern times. It was so bad that in a normal year, it would disqualify him from getting anywhere near the White House.”

In stylistic terms, the Trump Show was a flop. Bombastic almost from the get-go, he bellowed, ranted, grimaced, grunted, smirked, and, most puzzingly, sniffed frequently, as if he has some kind of problem with his sinuses. If you had turned the sound off and watched only his body language, you would have thought he trained for the debate by watching old newsreels of Benito Mussolini. It may not be fair but, like Al Gore’s sighs and Richard Nixon’s stubble, those are indelible impressions that will linger after what was said in the debate is forgotten.

And judging by the substance of the debate, Trump did not prepare for it by hitting policy books. Though two of his more egregious proposals, to build a wall on America’s border with Mexico and temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, were nowhere to be found, he served up campaign-rally boilerplate on “bad” trade deals and “law and order” that lacked the slightest hint of substance and frequently descended into word-salad incoherence. A telling moment was when moderator Lester Holt asked Trump how exactly he would bring lost manufacturing jobs back to America, he couldn’t offer a straightforward reply.

How did Clinton fare? She was poised, calm and plainly knowledgeable. At times, it seemed like she was content to sit back and let Trump flail and wail. Sure, a large swatch of the electorate wishes that Clinton would not become president in January, but few would argue that she lacks the capability to do the job.

On the other hand, Trump made it abundantly clear he is not up to the task.