In this final debate, Donald Trump demonstrated that he was capable of "debate prep," after he was accused (and proudly admitted) a lack of formal preparation in the earlier debates. Trump had at his fingertips several facts that even the fact-checkers could not refute:

So does this debate demonstrate that Trump can prepare for the presidency, as he "accused" Hillary of doing in previous debates? Nope. Getting your facts and figures right is only ONE part of preparing – the OTHER part is preparing to handle unexpected situations calmly, and Trump failed at that for a 3rd time. Trump seemed rattled at least three times:

I'll tell an anecdote of how that worked once when I was on one of those "talking head" TV shows debating against a seasoned political opponent. I told my son when to watch and he watched with his mom--my ex-wife and not a political fan. At the end of the TV show, my ex-wife called me to say, "Your opponent was a party regular and a pro but you tore her to shreds – how did you do that?" I responded, "I just said the same thing I'd said a dozen times before." I had been on a dozen TV and radio shows just like that one, talking about the same topic with a dozen other opponents, and honing my arguments. You know how you say after a tough situation, "Oh, I should have said X" Well, in politics, you get to say X the next time around – because the topics repeat over and over. And each time you say the same thing again, you say it a little better – to a different audience each time (and, if your politics are working, to a larger audience each time). So when my ex-wife saw me on TV, she was impressed because she was hearing the 5th or 13th or 20th versions of my responses, with the mistakes removed over time. My ex-wife didn't hear the first dozen versions, with lots of mistakes – she thought my TV response was natural and spontaneous, because I had prepared so many times that I could sound natural and spontaneous in front of a large audience.

Trump had an audience of many millions for the final debate. He did SOME preparation – but he needed to practice debating with an attacker who asked him tough, annoying, half-truth questions. Then he could have made his mistakes to smaller audiences, and given a practiced reply to Hillary – THAT is the preparation that Trump lacked.

--Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, jesse@ontheissues.org, October 21, 2016