Oxygen, Please. Stat!

"There's no such thing as bad publicity." P.T. Barnum

Over the years, the one thing Trump has been successful at has been garnering media attention, most often for negative reasons. He’s lived his life according to the P.T. Barnum philosophy of publicity. The 2024 campaign has been no exception. Whether it’s mugging and thanking imaginary fans at the 9/11 memorial ceremony or claiming during the debate that Harris “put out” or repeating racist lies about pet-eating immigrants, Trump continues to indulge in the only skill that he’s truly mastered — sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

Since the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris has been traveling the country, doing retail politics — campaigning in the swing states and building enthusiasm from the ground up. Donald Trump, on the other hand, has largely been absent from the campaign trail — doing one campaign event per week and leaving the rest to his toady surrogate, J.D. Vance. Yet most of the “buzz” around the presidential race has still been around Trump.

The media have been saying that the public is “just now getting to know Kamala Harris,” despite her having been the Vice President for almost four years, despite an unprecedented Democratic National Convention, despite the fact that she’s done multiple campaign events each week. Hmmmm. Could it possibly be that the media have not been doing their jobs? Could it be that they have continued to follow every shiny object that Trump dangles in their faces, to the exclusion of coverage of the Harris/Walz campaign?

There’s a chance that Tuesday’s presidential debate may have changed that. Harris (and, presumably, her debate prep team) made some pretty shrewd calculations about how to knock Trump off balance. They identified his weak points (his vanity, his obsession with crowd size, his perpetually vacillating position on women’s health, among others) well in advance of the debate, and they had a clearly defined strategy for dealing with each of them.

Because Harris and her team had done their debate prep thoroughly and successfully, the reaction from some on the right has been to accuse ABC News of providing them with the debate questions in advance. In reality, they merely did what candidates ordinarily do to prepare for a debate. They anticipated what subjects would be covered (the economy, national defense, the abortion issue, foreign policy) and prepared the candidate for those subjects and probably for many others.

On the other hand, prior to the debate, Trump and his team boasted about not needing debate prep. The truth is, even with diligent debate preparation, Trump would not have been able to compensate for a lifetime of disinterest in anything but himself. He wasn’t about to steep himself instantaneously in the nuances of foreign policy or of any other complex issue in a way that would be remotely on a par with an opponent who has both experience with and interest in most of those areas.

Trump has somehow gotten by for the entirety of his political life and most of the rest of his life without having to learn about the issues that are of concern to most Americans. Shamefully, our media have reinforced and rewarded his lack of engagement and intellectual curiosity by giving him a pass each time he has stumbled and fumbled his way through policy speeches, press conferences, campaign rallies, and impromptu courthouse rants.

Trump has always surrounded himself with people who will defer to him, whether he’s right, wrong, or somewhere in between. It was true in his business and it certainly was true during his time in the White House. It must have been quite a shock for someone who has rarely, if ever, been challenged so directly to face a debate opponent like Kamala Harris.

Vice President Harris successfully goaded Trump, starting with her entrance onto the debate stage. Remember how Trump stalked Hillary Clinton on the debate stage and invaded her personal space? Well, Kamala Harris successfully and graciously invaded his personal space by walking over to his podium to shake his hand. His only choices were to extend his hand to her or to rebuff her gesture. She put him on the defensive before the first word was spoken on the stage.

Things went almost immediately downhill from there for Trump, with Harris zeroing in on all of his vulnerabilities — his crowd size, his weakness, his failure to deliver on promises. Trump took every bit of bait, like one of those sharks he’s always talking about going after chum.

For the first time, someone has stolen some of the media thunder away from Trump, starting with the wildly successful DNC and, more recently, with her equally successful performance at the first (and perhaps only) presidential debate.

During that debate, Kamala Harris referred to creating an “opportunity economy” more than once, should she be elected. But she faces more important immediate opportunity of her own. If she can redirect at least some of the media attention away from Trump’s vortex of egotistical emptiness, she can place herself in the lead position in the minds of voters.

Kamala Harris has the opportunity to continue being the shiny object that the media pay attention to. She’s been pretty damn shiny so far. And the more oxygen she gets, the better we’ll all breathe.