Forget the old jokes, foreign policy was the real debate horror

If one was hoping to distinguish how the two major presidential candidates view the most critical foreign policy issues of our time, the debate last night was a shattering disappointment.

If one’s expectations were so low as to believe nothing but second-hand embarrassment would be gained from the exchanges last night, then maybe not so much.

On Ukraine and Israel, President Biden and former President Trump inflated, conflated, and bloviated their way through 11 minutes of foreign policy discussion, only turning back to the topics in fleeting moments of taunting incoherence during the rest of the time on the stage.

For Trump, it was surface-level attacks on how, to his mind, Biden’s weakness and lack of leadership in the “disgraceful” Afghanistan withdrawal in September 2021 encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine, and Hamas to attack Israel (he repeated this numerous times during the 90-minute debate, which took place in Atlanta and without a live audience).