ROSS DOUTHAT "THE DEBATE MISMATCH"

++Ross Douthat, who suffered from Obama Derangement Syndrome and general confusion during then Republican primaries,comes back from the dead to ask of us to return to what we used to know about our politics and recall once again what normalcy looks like. He says there has been too much gaming out of how Trump might ambush Hillary ,how he might manage expectations well enough to make s poor performance look like victory. But he says it is easy to lose sight of the core truth: It will be ridiculous if Donald Trump won these debates.

++He writes that these debates aren't like the primary debates. Those debates weren't debates at all--they were early episodes of a reality television program--a genre knows very well. Trump never shared the stage with fewer than three other rivals. He notes that James Fellows wrote he would go "intone a kind of hibernation "whoever the conversation turned remotely substantive and emerge to hurl insults and declaim his promises of greatness restored.

++Douthat says Trump has not yet done anything remotely like what he'll be asked to do this week: stand there and argue with a seasoned politician about public policy for 90 minutes without refuge or escape. Douthat says Trump hasn't shown anything to indicate he's cultivated the self discipline necessary for this task. "He remains true to himself-proudly ignorant,blustering and serially mendacious."

++Douthat doesn't find Clinton a particularly appealing politician. But he stresses she is solid and an experienced debater who knows the workings of American government inside and out, a careful,meticulous,unexciting performance of the kind that she has delivered in many debates before, should suffice to make her look wiser,safer and more serious than the tabloid character across the stage from her.

++Douthat says Trump enters these debates as a very well-known quantity, more than half the country is in fear of what his presidency will mean: there is no reason to think that many of those voters are primed to give him the benefit of the doubt.

++"A series of bates between a man proudly unprepared for the office of the presidency and a woman of Clinton's knowledge and experience should produce a predictable outcome: She should win, and he should lose."