At the end of Wednesday’s third presidential debate, Donald Trump said something so awful that it disqualifies him from ever holding any political office, let alone the position of commander-in-chief. Repeatedly prodded by moderator Chris Wallace to answer the question of whether he “will absolutely accept the result of this election,” Trump kept dodging and finally said, “I’ll keep you in suspense, okay?” It was a fundamental assault on a bedrock principle of democratic society. As Hillary Clinton rightly said, Trump’s remarks were “horrifying.”

This moment was the climax of the three debates—Trump’s final act of petulant self-destruction, and Clinton’s final moment of calmly smiling triumph—and it didn’t spring from accident or purely from Trump’s own anti-democratic malevolence. Rather, this moment—the one in which Trump revealed himself to be someone who is willing to risk the tradition of a peaceful transition of power rather than accept that he’s lost—came about because of the masterful way Clinton has handled all three debates.

In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Clinton said that Trump was someone so weak that he could “be baited with a tweet”—and in the debates she proved, again and again, that he can be baited by a sharp, quick-witted woman too. Her constant trolling, which involved maintaining a steely resolve in the face of his own slimy provocations, won her the debates and settled the most fundamental question of the election: Who has the temperament to be president?

The question was key because both candidates are unconventional for different reasons—Trump because of his background in business and entertainment rather than politics, and Clinton because she’s a woman making a bid for a position that has only been held by men for more than two centuries. Over the course of three debates, Clinton has decisively won the temperament question, not only by remaining calm and unflappable but also by provoking her rival to constantly act in peevish and even childish ways. This pattern was set in the first two debates, but in Wednesday’s third and final debate, Clinton overcame Trump’s half-hearted attempt to put forward a more sober public face, thus underlining her victory. The cumulative effect of the way she handled the debates clinched the election for her, and set her on a path to a landslide.



There’s been a powerful gender subtext running through all the debates. As a pathbreaking woman proving herself in a man’s world, Clinton used the familiar strategy of women in this situation of studying hard and being as professional as possible. Trump, by contrast, was constantly reverting to his natural state of toxic masculinity. It’s not uncommon in the corporate world for a well-prepared woman to compete against a man who thinks he can wing it. That was the fundamental dynamic of the presidential debates.