Hillary Clinton is foregrounded as the stereotypical circus showman — the “Music Man”-style huckster who, in this case, trades in the entertainer’s top hat for Honest Abe’s stovepipe hat.

The image, of course, nods directly to Clinton’s invoking the Steven Spielberg film “Lincoln” (a bit of a sketchy bet since the director took creative liberties, too) in Sunday’s debate. On the defense, the Democratic nominee was trying to paint for us how skilled politicking can require discrepancies between public and private positions.

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I, too, was tempted to sketch Clinton in an absurdly tall Lincoln stovepipe, but what Jones has so deftly done is reflect the artifice of the entertainer’s face. It is an expression literally made for the stage — a plastered mask of projected assurance. She is practically ready to belt out: “We got trouble / Right here in Campaign City / That starts with ‘C’ and rhymes with ‘T’ / And that stands for ‘Trump Trouble!'”

Towering behind is Mr. Troubling Trump himself. Jones is alluding to the current trend of creepy clown phobia, which some other visual commentators have also employed, but here the effect is beautifully twofold: The artist is able to render the Republican nominee’s face as only partly circus makeup; the rest of the Bozo tinting actually registers as honest to Trump’s true colors. Is that a clown wig or actual Donald hair? Who can tell?

What these Clinton and Trump “masks” accomplish, by working in knowing tandem and as dramatic counterpoints, is to spotlight the sheer degree of artifice that is a modern debate. This is a complicit production that nearly plays like reality TV.

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The scripted bits. The quick rejoinders. This is infotainment for our sake. Pay no attention to the facts behind the masks of misdirection. You don’t want low-energy talking points. We the people are conditioned to react to stock characters, narrative arcs and scene beats.

These two players are skilled — in their own ways — in the art of stagecraft, yet neither is so Reagan-esque as an actor that we can’t see the pancake makeup peel just a bit at the edges, reminding us that suspending our belief isn’t always so easy.

Are you not entertained?