Re - The first ten minutes of the Pence-Harris debate that I have listened to thus far

There must be all sorts of suggestions about the rules that should govern the conduct of the debates to help ease the pressure on the already stressed candidates and stave the scourge of interruptions and quarrelling that has come to characterize the debates that have been held thus far.

 The Moderator laid down the rules for the Mike Pence – Kamala Harris debate, it was supposed to be “two minutes to answer, without interruption by me or the other candidate. Then we'll take six minutes or so to discuss the issue.”

Three minutes to answer questions and a few more minutes for the follow-up would be ideal. Back in the day, Madiba Nelson Mandela, a deliberative but relatively slow speaker (of measured words) was advised to start off with his intended conclusion as his premise/ foundation instead of reasoning step by step from premise to conclusion and running out of time somewhere in the middle of his argument/ presentation and thereby not being able to sew it all up within the allotted time.

 We (all of us) looked forward to this debate between the running mates, some of us with some trepidation (fear of disaster for our special one) all of us, on both sides of the aisle with some expectation. It was hoped and expected (especially by the Joe Biden people, that Kamala Harris with her state prosecutor background should perform well as Sleepy Joe’s attack dog and that in the Joe Biden- Kamala Harris quarters her success would be measured and judged by the points scored, the elegance ( feminine grace) or the harm inflicted on the Trump Campaign front, based on the savagery and ferocity of her attacks (all well within legal limits of course ( the First Amendment)

The first question tossed at the Kamala, a leading question, was like a juicy, meaty bone thrown to a hungry hound, and one that she was expecting and fully prepared to deal with – the questions was,

“What would a Biden administration do in January and February that a Trump administration wouldn't do? Would you impose new lockdowns for businesses and schools in hotspots? A federal mandate to wear masks? You have two minutes to respond, without interruption.”

She was at liberty to answer in whatever way she thought fit and to the best of her advantage. I’m sure that Mike Pence was squirming where he was sitting, when he heard that first giveaway question to Kamala, an invitation to tell Americans and the rest of the world about the miracles a Joe Biden- Harris administration would have performed in January and February this year, that in fact by now the invisible enemy should have long been vanquished or on the retreat. I thought she was not going to answer the question. She spent the first 100 seconds of her allotted two minutes painting a painful picture of what was the state of general knowledge about the virus at the time it was first reported and what she wanted to convey – falsely -  as President Trump’s failure to respond adequately, and after that she then almost answered the question, saying, “ our plan is about what we need to do around a national strategy for contact tracing, for testing, for administration of the vaccine and making sure that it will be free for all. That is the plan that Joe Biden has and that I have, knowing that we have to get a hold of what has been going on and we need to save our country. And Joe Biden is the best leader to do that...”

Of course, more easily said than done, more easily said, retrospectively, with a lot of hindsight

Everybody, including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, knows, just as Mike Pence pointed out, that President Trump took an unprecedented emergency measure: Mike Pence burned up his two-minute replying to Kamala, unmistakably, thusly:

“Susan Thank you. And I want to thank the Commission and the University of Utah for hosting this event. And Senator Harris, it's a privilege to be on the stage with you. Our nation has gone through a very challenging time this year. But I want the American people to know that from the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of Americans first. Before there were more than five cases in the United States, all people who had returned from China, President Donald Trump did what no other American president had ever done. And that was he suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world. Now, Senator Joe Biden, Biden opposed that decision. He said it was xenophobic and hysterical, but I can tell you, having led the White House Coronavirus Task Force, that that decision alone by President Trump bought us invaluable time to stand up the greatest national mobilization since World War II. And I believe it’s saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Because with that time we were able to reinvent testing. More than 115 million tests have been done to date. We were able to see to the delivery of billions of supplies so our doctors and nurses had the resources and support they needed. And we began, really before the month of February it was hard to develop a vaccine and to develop medicines and therapeutics that’ve been saving lives all along the way. And under President Trump's leadership, Operation Warp Speed, we believe, will have literally 10s of millions of doses of a vaccine before the end of this year. The reality is, when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way. And quite frankly, when I look at their plan that talks about advancing testing, creating new PPE, developing a vaccine, umm, it looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about. I think the American people know that this is a president who has put the health of America first and the American people, I believe with my heart, can be proud of the sacrifices they have made. It’s saved countless American lives.”

I haven’t yet followed the debate further than this. It's unlikely that I am going to follow the rest of the US Presidential elections...