“Debate” is an iffy word for an exercise in which candidates are prompted by moderators to dole out their stump speeches bit by bit under hot lights while a clock counts the seconds and every quip and jab and stumble is used to keep score and proclaim a “winner.”

But when just one candidate is serious and the other is a vacuous bully, the term loses all meaning.

Monday night’s confrontation between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was a spectacle, for sure: the sheer reality-TV hugeness of it, the Super Bowl audience of tens of millions. “Debate of the Century,” said The Drudge Report. “America on the Brink,” said The Huffington Post. For once, the hype may have been about right, given the tightness of the polls and the nearness of the election.

There was a fundamental asymmetry to the exercise, because of the awful truth that one of the participants had nothing truthful to offer. But seeing them on the same stage distilled exactly who they have been throughout this campaign.