In the Presidential Debate, Kamala Harris Produced the Show She Wanted

At the ABC presidential debate, Kamala Harris had a programming challenge. Working against an experienced reality-TV professional, a savant of live broadcasts, she had to pull off a successful reboot of Democrats’ least-favorite TV show of the 2024 season: the June debate that saw the self-immolation of President Biden.

There were some hurdles. The same rules in place on CNN in June still held. There was no studio audience, and each candidate’s microphone would be turned off when the other was speaking. When Mr. Biden was still running, these guardrails were meant to avoid the dumpster fire of cross-talk and shouting that marked the first 2020 debate. But that would frustrate Ms. Harris’s campaign goal, which was to encourage Mr. Trump to be his own worst enemy.

So she, and whoever prepared her for Tuesday’s showdown, did what prime-time producers have done since TV’s early days: They worked within the constraints of the medium to produce the show they wanted.

If Mr. Trump could not bluster and shout over her, she would need to get him to melt down on his own time. If he could not stalk her onstage, as he did with Hillary Clinton in 2016, she would have to use the staging and the split-screen to create a dominance contest on her own terms.

It began before the first question was asked. Ms. Harris crossed the stage toward Mr. Trump and offered her hand. The handshake was a small exercise of control, designed to be seen by a prime-time audience: She was the active party, initiating the encounter, and he the reactive one, accepting. She introduced herself — “Kamala Harris” — as if to anticipate his habit of mispronouncing her first name. Visually, she made herself the focus of attention, the protagonist of the drama.

Then she set about making Mr. Trump into the antagonist she wanted, needling and baiting him, pulling his levers and pushing his buttons.