Well, Hilary Clinton thumped Donald Trump in the 2016 debates, too.That was my conclusion from the takedown last week, a first and last presidential debate I made myself watch. Mostly, I find these affairs silly, apropos of nothing for all the hype and ginned-up gravitas beforehand and babbling afterward.The ability to speak and to think on one’s feet are boxes to check off when considering a candidate, true. But are those the main skills required for the office?Some folks talk like the whole election hinges on 90 minutes of smack talking, as if a boxing match were settled at the weigh-in. Ranting about who might be eating other people’s pets in some podunk town in Ohio, where precisely no one’s pets are being eaten. Running on about immigrants causing a massive increase in crime across the nation, when crime continues to drop. Biting on a lame barb about crowd sizes.  Well, on second thought, maybe you can tell who should never be trusted with the highest, most powerful office in the world. Too bad sanity has little to do with our elections, caught up as we are in party over country.Democrats were as giddy in debate victory and considerably more smug back in 2016. Clinton showed more poise, leadership, command of actual facts, and had better jokes than Trump. It wasn’t even close. He glowered, he sniffled incessantly, he hovered, he told weird tall tales that couldn’t be right and of course weren’t.And then he won the election.My wife, the Democrat, says it’s different now. We’re turning the page. Not going back. No sir.Maybe she’s right. Agnostic in all things, I’m always open to voting for a sensible conservative, a Romney, a Curtis. I didn’t need debates in 2016 or last week to understand what I can’t abide. I know bad news when I see it.The election, thanks to the archaic Electoral College, brings a race that looks like it will be a photo finish, down to a state, a precinct or two in that state, constitutionally speaking the furthest thing from from one (hu)man, one vote. A suburb outside Philadelphia could well decide whether we can keep a republic, if you want to get histrionic about it.Ben Franklin might observe we’re perilously close to frittering away what he and the other founding fathers (the founding mothers then had to serve as the hidden neck in these matters) fought so hard to set up.The United States did survive a civil war. Other than that, never has such utter wackadoodle proved so believable to so many who should know better or truly are stupid enough to think they’ll win a righteous theocracy out of this deal, maybe not even have to bother with voting ever again.But there I go, getting histrionic myself, actually listening to what the ex-president says he’d do if he got the chance. I understand I’m gullible enough to believe him at his word on that much.Is Project 2025 his playbook or not? He says he hasn’t read it, though his people put it together for him, based on an awful lot he’s said. But the platform seems unpopular, so he says he’s against it. But then he hasn’t read it, right?You can’t go by debates, and you can’t go by what they say, detailed or in the broadest of suggested concepts. You should know by now that social media is suspect, just as likely the work of Russians as Chinese or domestic zealots uninterested in anything true or keeping America free.You can’t go by the party, given that both are utterly nuts in their own ways and would do anything — anything — to win a race. Good governance will earn you a snort at best should you raise that as a consideration with an operative from either one.  Maybe it’s worth looking to those broad swaths conservatism and liberalism as we understand each today — fascist vs. communist, to hear some label the other. (Mostly they are good for slow eye rolls. As in the ’50s are calling and they want their McCarthy back.)I don’t feel guilty throwing all that aside. Out of our list of actual existential issues — environmental, economic, cultural, technological — who will act in the most productive ways? Or failing that, who is most likely to do the least damage from here?This was plain to me in 2016 and it’s plain now. It’s got nothing to do with who “won” a debate.Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.The post Journalism Matters: Who cares who ‘won’ a debate? appeared first on Park Record.