Time To Hit Reset?

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Thursday’s was likely the most pathetic debate between two candidates for the office of president in the history of the republic. Call it the Gumfight at the Not O.K. Corral. The Felon versus The Melon.

This was supposed to be the debate that would save our democracy, that would prevent one of these guys from eluding justice after engaging in an insurrection and conspiracy to overthrow his own government.

Two very old white men who seemed most energized about who could hit a golf ball farther. It was as though just before the debate they had stood face to face, teed off and hit each other in the forehead.

One of them shamelessly lied time and time and maybe thirty times again, with such conviction that I almost believed he believed his lies; the other I wasn’t sure could have told me the time.

The liar had previously been investigated and convicted or adjudicated of thirty-four felonies for falsifying business records and for election and tax fraud to hide a not quite two-minute sex act with a woman who was not his pregnant wife; of sexual abuse which a judge said was in most states rape; of slander against the woman he raped; of business fraud for which he’s been ordered to pay almost half a billion dollars. Many, many other felony indictments are pending trial for such things as conspiracy to overthrow the election he embarrassingly lost, and theft of state secrets he embarrassingly kept by his toilet.

The other president up there was likewise investigated for years by Republican congressional committees and a Republican special counsel who concluded he was a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory, but for some reason declined to indict him for that.

One of those men didn’t belong on the same stage with the other, but hey, that’s American politics these days.

The one who did deserve to own that stage might have fared better in the debate a few years ago, but he didn’t fare better Thursday night, and his age was appallingly evident. Even the nearly as old criminal who debated him seemed taken aback.

At the end of it, the First Lady of the United States held the hand of the President of the United States to help him negotiate — sideways — the couple of steps to the safety of the next flat surface.

At what was meant to be a celebration afterwards, she said to him, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question.” In the manner of a pre-school teacher to a toddler.

The crowd, who must have seen a different debate than the rest of us, burst deliriously into “Four More Years! Four More Years! Four More Years!”

Four more years?

To save our democracy, to save a justice system founded in the idea that no one is above the law, first this guy’s gotta somehow get through four more months.

Best luck to him, to the rest of us.