KEEP Donald Trump off stage and wash this presidential campaign’s mouth out with soap, and American politics is still broken. That is the result that emerged from a controlled experiment in political science conducted on October 4th—more formally known as the first and only vice-presidential debate of 2016.
The debate pitted Hillary Clinton’s running-mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia against Mr Trump’s sidekick, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana. The two men, both sons of the Midwest with a neat line in folksy, aw-shucks modesty, spent quite a lot of their 90-minute clash stressing how much they respected each other’s faith and essential decency, even as they sparred about tax rates, how to fight terrorism and other questions of policy. As the pair bragged, competitively, about their Middle American credentials, Mr Pence took an early start by announcing: “I grew up with a cornfield in my backyard”. Mr Kaine countered that he had worked with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras as a young man. Neither man swanked about the size of his genitals, called anyone fat or declared himself a genius. With Mr Trump and his almost-equally-disliked rival Hillary Clinton absent from...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2dIFX4e
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