Most Americans have already decided what they think about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and about Donald Trump’s taxes and Stone Age seduction techniques. So rather than re-plow that ground, the debate on Oct. 19 should include questions on two issues that have gone mostly unexamined.

May I interrupt our national presidential psychodrama to offer a suggestion? Could the candidates spend a significant part of the third and last presidential debate talking about a couple matters that are important — vital even — for the future?

First, global warming. This hasn’t even come up as a question from a moderator, and thus has been mentioned only in passing. In the first debate, Clinton, discussing her clean energy proposals, noted that “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.”


“I did not. I did not. I do not say that,” Trump interjected. Actually, he did and does. Trump tweeted, in 2012, that “global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing noncompetitive.” He has subsequently said he was joking about China inventing global warming (ah, that Trumpian wit), but he has repeatedly called it a hoax. Indeed, he diminished climate concerns later in the debate, saying that “the single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your — your president thinks.”

Climate change was mentioned only during the second debate because audience member Ken Bone asked the candidates how they would meet the nation’s energy needs “while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers.” Trump responded by talking about clean coal (the at-scale economics of which are daunting) and by promising to put coal miners back to work. Clinton noted that she had a “comprehensive energy policy” that includes “fighting climate change, because I think that is a serious problem.”


And that is all we’ve heard thus far in the debates on an issue that threatens huge disruption around the globe over the next century. It’s really rather pathetic — and here, I mean on the part of the media. So perhaps when the candidates next meet, moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News could pose questions like these:

If you believe human-caused climate change is real, how would you battle it, what would the costs be for everyday Americans, and what effect would your plans have on their lives? And if you don’t believe the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, what have you based your opinions on — and what happens if your view turns out to be wrong?

A second magnitudinous matter that needs more attention: The Iran deal.

Clinton, who regularly cites her work in helping with the sanctions that brought the deal about, supports it; Trump, who in the second debate called it “the dumbest deal perhaps I’ve ever seen,” says he would renegotiate it.

So, the questions: If you support the Iran deal, what should a future president do if she or he discovers Iran is cheating, and what should the US approach be when the deal’s limitations on Iran’s centrifuges end, after a decade, and restrictions on its uranium enrichment levels and enriched-uranium stockpiles expire, after 15 years? If you don’t support the deal, what would you try to replace it with, and how would you go about obtaining your favored arrangement, taking into account that it’s highly unlikely our negotiating partners would join such an effort?


These are two subjects the next president will have to confront. Voters need to hear what they have to say about them — and if not in the final debate, then when?

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeScotLehigh.