I am not looking forward to tonight's debate. (In fact, I'm going to the Tiger game. Trump can take care of Hillary while we take care of the Indians.) And one of the reasons I'm not looking forward to it is that it won't really be a debate.
Presidential debates are not serious discussions of issues, problems, solutions and decisions presidents might have to make. They should be. But they're not. At their best, they are glorified joint press conferences in which the entire discussion is driven by randomly selected questions chosen by a media moderator - often questions that have a great deal more to do with the horse race dynamics of the race than they have to do with the job of the presidency.
But even that isn't really what matters in a presidential debate. Ultimately, these damn things are combat performance art. Each candidate tries to maneuver the other into making a horrendously dumb statement, or tries to lure the other into becoming the target of a memorable line. And each candidate tries desperately not to have an embarrassing situation that might be labeled a "gaffe" or a "deer-in-the-headlights moment." God help you if you momentarily forget something you wanted to say. Your campaign is over if that happens. (Just ask Rick Perry about that.)