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Analysis of the Second Presidential Debate

Samantha Lai and Vedika Vishweshwar
Oct 21, 2016
4 min read

There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s lurking during the second presidential debate was creepy. Really.

But even if you ignore Trump’s sinister behaviour, both Hillary and Donald had almost divergent public speaking tactics. We break it down for you, ranking each candidate with a score out of 10 on a range of different public speaking skills.

Body Language:

Both candidates spent most of the time standing rather than sitting throughout the debate. This is understandable as standing up enables them to communicate better with their audience in a more personal manner. In contrast, sitting down leaves a speaker passive and unable to effectively communicate with his or her audience.

One major problem with Trump’s body language was that throughout the debate, he often followed Clinton around. Many have criticized him for his behaviour, considering it as either an intimidating tactic or as a plain misuse of body language. Such a conclusion is drawn due to how his behaviour was disruptive to her delivery and greatly distracting in the case of the audience.

In the case of Clinton, one notable aspect would be that she smiled regularly throughout the debate. She did so both while Trump was mocking her and while she was speaking. Doing so made her more personable and showcased her admirable temperament. Clinton also had the tendency to walk closer to the audience whenever she was to deliver sentimental or emotional speeches. This increased the effect of her speeches as the close distance enabled her to communicate more effectively with the audience.

Trump: 6/10

Clinton: 8.5/10

Hand Gestures:

Both candidates used a significant amount of hand gestures. Gesticulating is of great importance for any and every public speaker. Not moving your hands makes you look unnatural and moving them around appropriately can aid you in making your point by emphasizing on certain content.

In Trump’s case, he used quite a lot of hand gestures, to the degree that it was somewhat excessive at certain points as he was using them for almost every single word in certain segments. While hand gestures help with emphasis, too much gesticulating may be distracting, as was the case of Trump during the debate. His hand gestures were of a some variety, something that could be noted from how he went between pointing, the OK hand gesture and the chopping board hand gesture.

Clinton also used quite a lot of hand gestures, although they were not as excessive as that of Trump’s. Her choice of gestures were generally more open. She also refrained from pointing, which could be considered as a wise choice. Pointing may, after all, be considered as overly aggressive by some.

Trump: 7/10

Clinton:8.5/10

Eye Contact:

Eye contact is of great importance in the case of public speaking. It helps speakers engage with the audience more while actively forming connections. Sustaining eye contact with the audience is a symbol of confidence and willingness to engage, both of which are positive traits that should be encouraged for those longing to be good public speakers.

Throughout the debate, Trump did sustain quite a lot of eye contact with the audience. However, he mainly angled his eyes specifically towards the person asking the question in an almost intimidating and hostile manner. Hardly did he include the audience and that affected his delivery as he failed to engage with everyone properly.

Clinton’s eye contact was better than that of Trump’s. She sustained eye contact with certain individuals at certain points in time in order to better deliver her message, taking for example the time she tackled the problem of islamophobia raised by a Muslim woman. Generally, she actively engaged the entire audience in order to make everyone feel included.

Trump: 6/10

Clinton: 9/10

Relevance of Content:

Trump attacked Clinton’s foreign policy twice in an effort to escape some difficult questions. When asked how he would address Aleppo’s humanitarian crisis, he first criticized Clinton’s proposition to arm rebels, then applauded the Putin-Assad friendship, and finished up by contradicting his running mate on Syrian military strategies. Even when asked about Islamic immigration, Trump retaliated by criticizing Hillary’s decision to vote for the Iraq war, but only upon further interrupting did he finally assert “extreme vetting”.

Hilary’s answers were largely much more relevant, except when she had to name one positive attribute of her fellow candidate. Instead of praising Trump himself, she briefly applauded the loyalty of his children, then talked about why family is important to her. It was obviously an awkward question for her, but she responded with an even more awkward answer. Donald: 6.5/10 Hillary: 8.5/10

Literary Devices:

Repetition is one of Trump’s most typical speaking tactics - he always tends to repeat important sentences at least twice, and the debate was no different. Most importantly, he used the controversial phrase “locker room chat” multiple times when defending himself in light of the 2005 audio recording of him using lewd language towards women. He also continuously said to Hillary, “if you were a good senator you would have done it” when attacking her proposed policy plans. His repetition wasn’t very effective because it was usually used to hide lack of specificity in his speech, hence not making a very meaningful impact on the audience.

Hilary used repetition differently, using parallel sentence structure rather than simply repeating the entire sentence. One example would be where she repeats the sentence structure I want to, saying “I want to invest in you. I want to invest in hard working families….. I want to have a surcharge on incomes over 5 million”. This made more of an impact than Donald’s repetition because she adapted the structure as needed, and it outlined her points in an organized but emotive manner.

Donald: 7/10 Hillary: 8/10