By Haley Jena, Guest Columnist
Donald Trump was not prepared for the second presidential debate, and he is not prepared to be president of the United States.
In the midst of the most unusual, unfavorable election season yet, I'm sad to say that the venomous second presidential debate last Sunday night didn't surprise me. As my roommate and I were watching live on our laptops, I found myself constantly yanking out my headphones and expressing my astonishment with her. I wasn't sure if I was watching reality television or a presidential debate.
In what many call the most savage election yet, that Sunday night was an untamed battleground of name calling, interrupting and question dodging.
In just ninety minutes, Trump claimed the crown for being the first presidential nominee to threaten to jail his opponent. He argued with the moderators for not asking Hillary Clinton about her private email server immediately after they had just done so.
Instead of discussing his foreign policy or domestic concerns, he repeatedly bashed his opponent and, paradoxically, himself. A man who was just caught on tape openly bragging about sexually assaulting women (or as Trump calls it, "locker room talk") focused on Bill Clinton's past with a pre-debate press conference featuring Bill's sexual assault accusers. He even blamed Hillary for his own evasion of taxes.
"A lot of my write-off was depreciation, and other things that Hillary as a senator allowed, and she'll always allow it because the people who give her all this money, they want it," said Trump in the debate.
To be fair, while Trump took the prize for the most inaccuracies (and certainly the most nose-sniffling), Hillary exaggerated the truth every now and then. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times pointed out that Clinton never seriously tried to "get rid of carried interest for years" in tax loopholes that benefit wealthy citizens as she claimed.
Both candidates have different faults and different problems, but it is clear that there is only one candidate qualified to be president of the United States. And it is certainly not Donald Trump.
Dodging question after question, Donald reminded me of a high schooler called on in class to answer a question that forgot to do the reading -- a chain of circles that deflected him from almost never answering moderators and citizens with substantive, thoughtful answers. Moderator Anderson Cooper had to ask Trump not once, not twice, but four times about Trump's leaked quote on sexually assaulting women until he finally denied it, after stating that "nobody has more respect for women than [he does]."
Even still after his false denial, Trump swerved: "No, I have not [done those things]. I will tell you that I'm going to make our country safe. We're going to have borders in our country . . . We're going to make America safe again."
Beyond lack of preparation and poise, however, Trump's performances in the debates illustrate the understated double standards Hillary faces.
Michelle Vitali of Edinboro University encapsulated it perfectly.
"Imagine a woman who showed up unprepared, sniffling like a coke addict and interrupting her opponent seventy times. Let's further imagine that she's had five kids by three men, was a repeated adulterer, had multiple bankruptcies, paid zero federal taxes and rooted for the housing crisis in which many thousands of families lost their homes. Wait...there's more: she has never held any elected office in her life and evangelical Christians love her just as she is," the professor writes.
Hillary certainly has her faults, but she is the single candidate who is most prepared to lead our nation. While arguably "corrupt," she is not perceived as a threat to our basic human rights and sense of security. She is not a blatant racist, advocate of sexual assault and rape culture -- the list could go on.
At the very least, she is the lesser of two evils in a first-past-the-post electoral system. And at the very least, she was the only mature, well-versed, decent human being on stage last Sunday.
jenahm@miamioh.edu