Whereas understandable brouhaha media buzz surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris' debate with former President Donald Trump took on the staged spectacle of a competitive sports event, with fans on each side hoping for a decisive style-point win — or better yet, a blockbuster knockout victory — the stakes were far more consequential.
That contest was between two foundationally opposing leadership visions and contrasting performance histories with the ultimate November winner determining the future of our country and, by extension, its global economic competitiveness and national security.
Although Trump's priorities — supported by previous domestic and international achievements — are well-known, the debate shed virtually no insights or clarity regarding Harris' recent policy contradictions to her own previous positions and action failures on important issues.
Trump accepted the three-on-one cage match debate venue moderated by blatantly hostile ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis as a condition imposed for participation by the Harris campaign.
He did so also knowing that Harris has a close friendship with Dana Walden, a senior Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, a network where nearly all of Harris' coverage has been positive and Trump's negative.
The moderators fully obliged their network, as predicted, by targeting far more tough questions at Trump than at Harris, repeatedly interjecting false fact-checking claims on him while letting big whoppers by her slide by, and consistently failing to pursue follow-up queries regarding why her positions on key issues voters care most about have changed ahead of the November election.
On Harris' favorite attack issue, she falsely claimed that Trump was raring to sign a total federal abortion ban. Trump responded that this assertion is a lie, pointing out that he favors exceptions for rape and incest along with pregnancy time termination restrictions determined by voters of each state.
On the other hand, he definitely objects to late-term abortions and intentionally allowing newborn babies from botched abortions to die.
As Democrats and media outlets accuse Trump of dramatizing the Democratic abortion agenda, data from the Minnesota Department of Health show that at least eight babies who survived abortions in the state were left to die. This was against the law.
However, due to efforts by the state's Democratic governor, Tim Walz, Minnesota no longer even keeps track of born-alive babies. In January 2023, Walz signed a broad abortion law that included no limitations on how late during pregnancy a mother may end the life of her unborn baby.
Harris got a pass from Davis in refusing to respond to Trump's question whether she supported allowing abortions into the seventh, eighth and ninth months.
When Trump attributed rising crime rates largely to an invasion of many millions of illegal migrants allowed into the country on Harris' watch, "World News Tonight" anchor Muir interjected: "President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down."
Trump fired back with his own fact check that "they didn't include the cities with the worst crime," referencing the 2022 omission of data from Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago.
Questioned why she has recently reversed her previous 2019 support for a fracking ban, a particularly important issue in critical swing state Pennsylvania, Harris dishonestly claimed to have reversed that position in a 2020 presidential debate.
Harris didn't actually say that she had changed her own position on the issue at that time, but only that her running mate, then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, "will not end fracking."
She then went on in Tuesday's debate to take unquestioned credit for "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history."
Not mentioned was the reality that since 2021, U.S. oil production has increased by 2.1 million barrels daily, versus 4 million during Trump's first three years before the pandemic caused prices to plunge and then later bounce back after the slump under Biden-Harris.
Meanwhile, eased sanctions on oil from Iran and Venezuela by her administration has increased their production nearly as much as the U.S. has increased its production.
Harris wasn't asked whether she still supports a de facto government mandate to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 despite nearly half of all current electric vehicle owners indicating plans to switch back to petroleum vehicles at a time when manufacturers are losing money on each EV produced.
We also don't know if she still support her previous vows to impose universal government healthcare for all — including illegal migrants — that eliminates private health insurance.
Regarding her role as the Biden-Harris administration's spectacularly failed "border czar," as president would she implement her previous pledge to decriminalize illegal border crossings?
And what about her former positions favoring the defunding of police, ending cash bailouts for apprehended criminal suspects, mandatory gun buybacks from honest citizens, and taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender inmates?
A recent survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60% of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction and that they didn't know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues.
We didn't learn anything during the debate to change that.
In the end, the debate was a competition between a candidate who is unburdened by her failed performance imagining a future in which she follows the same policies and a candidate with proven achievements who made life better and could do so again.
It was a choice between socialist, central government, "economic opportunity" promises and free enterprise principles that emphasize merit-based equal opportunity incentives.
Neither side of this sharp ideological divide likely was influenced to change its voting preferences, leaving a rapidly vanishing number of remaining independents ultimately to decide the winner.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.