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How the World Views Trump vs Clinton

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After the first presidential debate, American media devoted themselves to pouring over every nuance of the candidates' performances -- examining everything from body language to facial expressions, and subjecting their statements to fact-checking.

Ballot Brief wondered how the rest of the world viewed the candidate face-off that some pundits equated with the Superbowl. Here's a sampling of what we found.

The Times of London carried an analysis of the debate from columnist, commentator and former executive editor, Daniel Finkelstein. As you can tell from the title, Trump Needn’t Worry If He Lost This Debate, Finkelstein thinks the whole debate process is over-rated. He looks back to the first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and concludes that even its impact was mostly a myth. And he says the winner of the 2016 election will depend far more on who is able to get out the vote than on any debate performance.

You don’t like Donald Trump? You regard him as a menace and think his behaviour outrageous? Of course you do. Think who you are and what your interests are. Of course you do. His job, however is to motivate “his people” and Clinton hers. You wouldn’t select Trump if you wanted to expand the range of people tempted to vote Republican, but, and this is critical, you wouldn’t choose Hillary Clinton to expand the range of those tempted to vote Democrat either. As hard as it sometimes is for British audiences to grasp, she is at least as polarising as he is.

Writers for online media outlet Russia Today seemed to thoroughly enjoy the spectacle of debate U.S.-style. They concentrated on the action taking place in social media, embedding their favorites in an online article titled "Shimmies, sniffles & shout downs."

It wasn’t just policy that had people tweeting, some of the most popular moments weren’t zingers delivered by the opponents but moments of weirdness. When Trump claimed to have a better temperament than Clinton, the former secretary of state couldn’t help but laugh. Trump then said Clinton had the “wrong temperament”, to which Clinton said, “Okay,” and gave a little shoulder shimmy as she chuckled to herself.

Al Jazeera featured a reporter's notebook on the debate from its senior Washington correspondent Alan Fisher, who covers the candidates on a regular basis.  He wondered which Trump would show up for the first debate: the " focused, disciplined candidate" of recent days, or the "free-range, scattergun businessman who blew his way through the Republican primary campaign?" He decided both were on-hand.

His [Trump's] aim was clear from the start. He wanted to paint the picture of an America that wasn't working, that could be better and had the politicians to blame. Politicians like Hillary Clinton.
The Democratic challenger wanted to show America that her campaign wasn't just about tearing down Trump, but it was also about presenting her policies, a vision for making things better.

German broadcaster Deutsche Weller took a different tack on the debate. One of several articles devoted to coveragewas the transcript of an e-mail interview with American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt. He's a professor of philosophy emeritus at Princeton University and author of the bestseller, On Bullsh*t. Here's a quote from the exchange:

DW: Now could you please apply your concept of B.S. to America's presidential election. How do the key protagonists Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton compare in their use of it in the campaign?
Harry G. Frankfurt: All politicians are in the business of manipulating opinions and attitudes. Hence, all politicians characteristically submit to the temptation to B.S. This applies both to Trump and to Clinton. However, Trump and Clinton differ in the degrees to which they indulge in B.S. Trump engages in B.S. far more often than does Clinton. When he is not engaged in bull…….., moreover, he is quite commonly lying. Clinton also lies, but not so much. Moreover, she is not indifferent to the fact that she is lying, as Trump most often is. When she is caught in a lie, she is generally embarrassed, or she tries to explain that it is not exactly a lie. When Trump is caught either in B.S. or in a lie, he is not at all embarrassed. He merely repeats the same B.S. or the same lie.

PLEASE NOTE: The information, statements and opinions expressed here are solely those of the respective authors and do not reflect the views of KCETLink. KCETLink makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy or reliability with respect thereto for any purpose.

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