donald trump entered sunday night<u+2019>s debate both lacerated and liberated. he had been lacerated by the release of a now infamous videotape in which he talked about how he seduces women, including married women. and he was liberated by essentially declaring his independence from the republican party and its leading figures, many of whom abandoned him over the release of that tape. so the question approaching an epic presidential debate sunday night was whether, in this new phase, a liberated donald trump could stop the bleeding and get back on his feet. in the first half hour, that seemed unlikely. but then, over the next hour, he appeared to succeed. in those raucous opening minutes, hillary clinton declared that mr. trump isn<u+2019>t fit to be president of the united states. in return, he promised that, if he is elected, he will order his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her. and those were only the highlights of an opening phase that was simply shocking in the intense nature of the personal attacks between the two people vying to become the next president of the united states. and that seemed unlikely to allow him to recover. then a different kind of debate evolved<u+2014>one that was still pointed and nasty, but substantive. mr. trump, who had seemed on his heels at the outset, recovered to deliver an effective critique of president barack obama <u+2019>s health-care overhaul. he defended his seemingly friendly attitude toward russian president vladimir putin by saying simply that it<u+2019>s worth getting along with russia if the kremlin will help attack islamic state. at one remarkable point in discussing the vicious civil war in syria, he acknowledged he disagrees with his own running mate, gov. mike pence, on whether to confront aggressive russian tactics there. the candidates engaged in a spirited but enlightening debate on tax policy during which, in an odd twist, two wealthy americans each accused the other of being in favor of helping other wealthy americans. he may have interrupted mrs. clinton a bit too often, and engaged in what some will consider bullying tactics. yet once the atmosphere calmed down, those moments seemed less frequent than in their first debate. mrs. clinton still was the greater master of policy detail, and she delivered her own critique of the so-called obamacare health law and what she would do to fix the crown jewel of her party<u+2019>s domestic policy achievements in recent years. she continued to hammer mr. trump on disparaging comments he<u+2019>s made over time about immigrants, muslims and, especially, women. she delivered a sharp critique, for example, of mr. trump<u+2019>s proposal, made earlier this year, to ban all muslims from entering the country. <u+201c>how do you do that?<u+201d> she asked. <u+201c>we are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty. how do we do what he has advocated without causing great distress within our own county?<u+201d> but this time mr. trump quietly backed away from his original proposal to ban muslims from entering the country, without exactly admitting that<u+2019>s what he was doing. he called for <u+201c>extreme vetting<u+201d> of immigrants rather than a ban. and he turned his repeated calls for american allies to do more to carry their weight into a specific call for them to provide more help in syria by creating and maintaining safe zones for syrian refugees. <u+201c>i believe in having other people pay for them, as an example, the gulf states, who are not carrying their weight, but they have nothing but money, and take care of people,<u+201d> he said. by the end, it had become almost a conventional presidential debate, and mr. trump was quicker on his feet and more nimble and more substantive than he was in the first debate. in some ways, in fact, his performance was the reverse of the first debate, when he started strongly and ended poorly. it is hard to know how much a decent debate performance will matter to the many republicans who seem to have lost faith in mr. trump or confidence that any step forward in his campaign won<u+2019>t be followed by a step backward. it<u+2019>s also hard to know what will happen to mr. trump<u+2019>s support among women, and among republicans with misgivings about him, whose support he had been consolidating in the weeks before the explosive tape with his lewd comments about women. it also isn<u+2019>t clear whether his reminding voters of bill clinton <u+2019>s sexual history will matter, or how effective he was at skewering mrs. clinton again for her use of a private email server as secretary of state. but if the imperative of this debate was for mr. trump to survive the onslaught and get back on his feet, he appeared to do that. write to gerald f. seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
in debate, a reeling donald trump regains his footing - wsj
gerald f. seib