Well, that was a surprise.

No one thought the first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on Thursday, June 27, would be the epitome of statesmanship and oratory. The Lincoln-Douglas debates, it ain’t. Or, as Lawrence O’Donnell said afterward on MSNBC, “In any sort of normal universe, you would think the candidate who, during a presidential debate said, ‘I didn’t have sex with a porn star’ was the loser of that debate. That would be the normal scorecard.”

This was not normal.

Still. I knew that Donald Trump lies a lot. I knew that Joe Biden is old (as is Trump). Both of those things were on display — and how — during the CNN Presidential Debate. What I didn’t know was that the agreed-upon rules of the debate would render Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — excellent journalists — so completely ineffectual.

Presidential debate reactions

Nothing about this debate inspired anything but disappointment and disillusion. Ah, democracy. It was fun while it lasted.

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And while I have written about the coverage of a lot of debates, I’ve never seen anything like the media reaction to this.

Biden’s voice was hoarse from the get-go (aides later said he had a cold). And, especially at the beginning of the debate, he seemed to lose focus; at one point he froze for a few seconds while answering a question. He struggled throughout the debate to mount a defense against Trump’s non-stop litany of lies and misinformation.

“His voice being very hard to hear, it was hard to tell what he was saying, because his voice was so weak, and his halting delivery in his first couple of answers has got to put a shock into the campaign.”

A Fox News pundit talking about Biden? Nope. That was Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, who led a shocked-sounding panel immediately after the 90-minute debate. And they were not alone. CNN’s panel — except for the Trump supporters — sounded like they just got back from a funeral.

“There is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” John King — not exactly given to hyperbole — said. “It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now.” Abby Phillips, also on CNN, agreed. “The panic I am hearing from Democrats is not like anything I have heard in this campaign so far,” she said.

Fox News offered a similar appraisal, though in their case it was expected. Given the circumstances, they were almost diplomatic.

Almost.

Debate fact check? Not from the CNN moderators

“All of the details of the debate, none of that matters,” Brit Hume said. “One thing mattered more than anything else tonight, and that was Joe Biden’s demeanor. And from the moment he opened his mouth and from the first question he got, I think America looked and said this man should not be reelected.”

Of course, it’s not Hume’s place to say what “America” is thinking. We’ll find that out on Election Day (or a few days or weeks afterward). But Hume is also wrong about another thing: details do matter. CNN had said before the debate that the moderators would not engage in fact-checking. With Trump on the stage, it would have taken half the night to get through it.

But when Trump repeatedly played the greatest hits of his lie and misinformation catalog, like claiming that in some states Democrats allow abortion after birth, Tapper and Bash sat on their hands. It took Biden to call him out on it. And there was no attempt to keep the candidates on track when they wandered, which was pretty much during every single answer.

For instance, Jan. 6 didn’t come up for about 35 minutes. Which is fine, it didn’t have to be the first question or the only thing they talked about. But you’d think the moderators would at least encourage Trump to actually answer their questions about it.

Honestly, if this is the best we can do in terms of a debate, what is the point?

Who won the debate?

Biden got a little better as things went along — he perked up the most when something Trump said enraged him, which was fairly often. “Every single thing he said is a lie,” Biden said after Trump talked about veterans. Later, Trump inexplicably said of Biden, “I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy.”

If you really wanted to question the reality we’re living in, you could have gone to X, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who didn’t qualify for the debate, conducted his own little shadow debate, “moderated” by John Stossel, a former ABC News reporter.

What a world.

Substance should matter. Optics count, but should they count for everything? They count for a lot, and that’s what Biden will have to shake, to hear pundits tell it, and that’s a tall order.

“Biden stuttered, but he told the truth,” Van Jones said. “He looked terrible, but his policies were good. Trump spoke plainly, but he lied the whole time. He looked good, but his policies were terrible.”

The next debate is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 10, on ABC. It’s tempting to say it can’t get any worse, but after Thursday night, all bets are off.

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