Monday night\u2019s U.S. presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go down as one of the most-watched political events in history. But was it the turning point some expected it to be? Brock University political scientist Paul Hamilton doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/strong>For all the hype, the debate did not really shed more light on either candidate,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth performed consistently with their previous efforts on the (primary) debate stage.\u201d<\/p>\n As for who won the debate, Hamilton said it\u2019s not a typical election campaign so the gauge of what normally wins a presidential debate doesn\u2019t apply.<\/p>\n \u201cI was surprised by Trump\u2019s lack of focus and control. He frequently interrupted Clinton and veered from his message at times. By the normal standards of debate, I think Clinton won, but this is not a normal election contest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMost elections are a process of a candidate revealing themselves to the electorate, but this is not that election,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cThis is two very well-known personalities and people have crystalized opinions of them.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the performance of moderator Lester Holtz, Hamilton said he was in a tough spot.<\/p>\n \u201cI like him, but I thought he kind of lost control of it at times. The thing with Trump is he will take every opportunity he can to interrupt, interject and insult.\u201d<\/p>\n Brock professor Tony Volk in the Department of Child and Youth Studies is an expert in bullying issues and was watching Trump\u2019s actions carefully Monday night.<\/p>\n \u201cMy reactions are similar to what many pundits said. I think Clinton won the debate. Trump tried to bully her, but was unable to as she wasn’t meek or weak,\u201d said Volk.<\/p>\n Like Hamilton, Volk said he was surprised by Trump\u2019s lack of self-control.<\/p>\n \u201cMy biggest surprise, of sorts, was that he was so easily baited into responding and getting off script. It’s not surprising given that’s a pattern of his behaviour, but I thought he would be able to control it better than he did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday night\u2019s U.S. presidential debate will go down as one of the most-watched political events in history. But was it the turning point some expected it to be? Brock University political scientist Paul Hamilton doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":40205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,1,4,5],"tags":[4218,4512,4247,3502],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41277"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41279,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41277\/revisions\/41279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}