Watching Donald Trump melt down over 90 minutes of televised debate was both appalling and enlightening.

It was appalling for reasons obvious to the pundits and millions of ordinary viewers who concluded that Trump had booted his first face-to-face encounter with Hillary Clinton.

He stumbled and fumbled, scowled and sniffed as he steadily lost his grip on both his arguments and his equanimity. He transformed in minutes from a blustering but coherent critic of the status quo into the rambling, ignorant, “braggadocious” (to use his own odd word) liar we’ve come to know over the past year. He confirmed everything negative about himself, and added a few more details for good measure.

It was enlightening because on the other side of the stage his opponent was giving a convincing and reassuring performance as an actual president-in-waiting. She’ll never be a Barack Obama or even a Bill Clinton when it comes to oratory. But Hillary Clinton showed a firm grasp of the issues and – perhaps even more important – the ability to face down a bully and expose him for what he is.

Clinton also laid to rest doubts about her health, fed by her recent bout of pneumonia and Trump’s condescending accusation that she doesn’t have the “stamina” to be president. In fact, he’s the one who wilted under pressure, not her. His morning-after whining about the alleged bias of the debate moderator and even his microphone makes clear that even he knew he had been outmatched.

Clinton effectively eviscerated Trump’s vaunted record as a businessman. In the absence of any record of public service, that’s his main claim to be qualified to lead the United States. Yet he effectively admitted that his business strategy consists in stiffing creditors, not paying taxes, and using bankruptcy as a blunt weapon against ordinary workers. And he made no apologies: he freely acknowledged that he’s out to grab all he can for himself, “and that’s what I do.”

All this has long been known to anyone who cared to look closely at the record. But Clinton lured Trump into laying it out as clearly as he ever has, on the biggest stage of the presidential campaign.

This week makes the choice facing American voters as stark as it could possibly be. In the aftermath of the debate, Clinton observed that the central issue is quite simple – who has the “temperament and fitness and qualification to hold the most important, hardest job in the world.”

From what we saw on Monday, it’s no contest. Trump’s “temperament” is abysmal and he is clearly both unfit and unqualified to be president. In the words of the New York Times’ editorial board this week, he’s the “worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.”

Yet the pundits still question how much all this will matter in determining the outcome of the race. After all, Trump has been unabashedly Trump for many months now, and it’s got him to a virtual tie in the presidential race just six weeks before voting day. He’s managed to master what The Economist calls “post-truth politics” – the art of lying in ways so bold that it disarms his opponents. Angry workers in rust-belt states may well not be bothered that he chooses his own “facts,” and they certainly don’t care what the New York Times has to say.

Still, the stakes are much too high for it not to matter. If Trump was seeking to run almost any other country, it would be a tragedy just for his own people. But the prospect of Trump in the White House presents a danger not only to Americans but to the entire world.

Clinton took him down a notch this week. She has two more debates to finish the job.

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