The world was watching the U.S.

presidential debate on Tuesday night, and what they saw was

not pretty.

A "national humiliation," said the Guardian in the U.K. "Cacophonique," the Franceinfo news
organization opined. The German public broadcaster DW assessed things far more bluntly. And
Israel's leading TV anchor tweeted "condolences to America," writing, "It is hard to stoop lower
than this."
DW's chief international editor Richard Walker said the event would "be
seen as another piece of evidence that American democracy is in a pretty
tattered state."

Walker worried about how "non-democratic parts of the world" would

perceive it. "China, for instance, is holding up its system of
authoritarianism as the better way," he said. "They can pretty easily
point to this debate and say, 'Is that what you want? Is democracy what
you want? Or isn't our way better?' "
 ELECTIONS

'Unhinged,' 'Predictable': What Undecided Debate Watchers

Thought Of Candidates

To many Chinese viewers, the chaos of the debate reflected that of the
U.S. at large.
"Is this American-style civilization?" one person wrote on the Chinese
Twitter-like app Weibo, the South China Morning Post reported.
Another user said: "I would feel desperate if I was an American."

Chinese analysts noted the seeming futility of a debate that reflected

entrenched beliefs without offering a way forward.

"Regrettably, from this debate, this is no sign that such confrontation

and divergence could be bridged, no matter who takes the rein," Zhang
Tengjun, who studies U.S. politics at the China Institute of International
Studies, told the Global Times in a story headlined "Chaotic
Trump-Biden debate shows 'recession of U.S. influence, national power.'
"

At one point, Biden referred to Trump as "Putin's puppy" — reminiscent

of a remark by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 debates, when she called
Trump Putin's "puppet."

Asked for comment, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's

spokesman, told reporters in Moscow: "Of course we're witnessing a new
trend in political culture and electoral culture in the United States. But
we don't want to comment on it and make any assessments, because it
would immediately be seen as an attempt at interference."

An announcer on Russian state TV said: "The candidates behaved like

their voters — brawls on the streets of American cities have not let down
for several months. America is divided and inflamed."
Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications at Japan's Hokkaido
Bunkyo University, told the South China Morning Post that his peers
lamented that Americans are now in an "unfortunate" position.

"I thought it was pretty symbolic of how polarized American politics has
become in the last decade or so, with the two leaders and their respective
camps having no dialogue at all between them," he said.

Former British diplomat John Sawers told the The New York Times that
the debate left him "despondent" about America: "The country we have
looked to for leadership has descended into an ugly brawl."

ANALYSIS

Trump Derails 1st Presidential Debate With Biden, And 5 Other

Takeaways

Global reaction to the debate between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden
was largely similar to reactions in the U.S. But to many international observers, Tuesday's
spectacle wasn't just unseemly; it represented an America in decline, eliciting pity in some cases,
and in others, leading some to question whether democracy is a political system worth
embracing.