Trump still stands but his campaign for the White House is getting dirtier and dirtier
Donald Trump's last week was commonly described by political commentators as the worst any mainstream presidential candidate had ever experienced. The Republican grandees running for the exit door certainly appeared to agree. So yesterday's debate had the potential to be the moment at which Trump Towers collapsed completely. And it wasn't. It stands still.
Now Trump lost the debate. That much is clear. CNN viewers called it 57-34 against him. YouGov put it much closer, at 47-42, though with men saying he'd edged it. And watching it, his discomfort shone through. But he's still very much in the game, and yesterday might just be seen as the moment at which the crisis passed. How?
Well he deployed the classic response of apologise; say that things had been slightly misunderstood; and then pivot to attack your opponent.
The apology: 'I'm not proud' of what had been said, and the restatement that he'd apologised to his family, carrying with it the inference that if they'd accepted such an apology, the electorate should do likewise.
The misunderstanding: 'locker room-talk'. And given the wide male-female difference in polling numbers, maybe this line has resonance with quite a lot of men
But then the pivot. First what one might term the rather sweeping comment 'Nobody has more respect for women than I do'; but all to set up the target: Clinton. Not Hillary. But Bill.
Because here's the centrepiece of Trump's strategy last night. It is to use Bill's own line of never letting a good crisis go to waste. To reflect the character issue back onto the Democrat candidate. To suggest that people compare his 'locker room-talk' with the actions of Mrs Clinton's husband.
Now Hillary Clinton piled into her opponent. As you'd expect. While she'd disagreed with the views of former Republican nominees, she'd 'never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different'.
And boy did they hit out at one-another. The smiles they shared at Trump's wedding are a thing of the distant past. They might've shook hands at the end, but nobody watching could possibly imagine they actually *wanted* to.
And yet.... For all the words thrown, this is not the knockout blow it might well have been if the Democrats had a candidate who didn't bring what one might term such 'character baggage'. The Clintons used to joke that with them, you got two for the price of one. The problem for Mrs Clinton is that the actions of her husband, and the character assassination he suffered in the 90s, stick to her like American Gorilla Glue.
Most election campaigns are a fight for which issue is the dominant one. This one seems different – they both want to put character at its heart. And when you're fighting over the same topic, it tends either to lead to a really seated debate, or to drag the debate down. So I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more recordings of Trump come out. And Trump is going to dig out every woman he can find with an accusation to level at Bill Clinton.
This campaign is dirty and getting dirtier.
As last night showed, in the absence of yet more, even more damning revelations, Trump's name is going to be on the ballot paper. This morning, we could've woken up to the news that he was a dead duck. Well he's not. He's still afloat, and the November election is going to be all about character. And from what we saw last night, both candidates are going to be bloodied and bruised by the time it's over.
Francis Ingham MPRCA is director general of the PRCA, chief executive of the ICCO and a master at the City of London Company of Public Relations Practitioners.