He again received most of the post-debate attention, and it wasn't pretty.
China has been mildly amused by what the state press has called the "China-bashing competition," but for the second debate the attention reached new heights.
They help define the candidates, frame the debate, command attention and inject some communal moments into an increasingly atomized political process.
I suspect this is by the design of gun proponents, since such a debate distracts attention from the ultimate yardstick, which is the number of deaths.
Outside, other students sauntered around the campus, smoking, listening to their iPods, saying hello to friends, paying the debate no attention whatsoever.
It is the Democratic opponents who want to force the debate while attention is riveted on corporate scandals and the sagging stock market.
Throughout the campaign pressuring Walmart over its labor record, the employee-led advocacy group Organization United for Respect at Walmart drove continued debate and attention around the retailer's practices through employee testimonials, strikes and protests.
It's unconfirmed, but unless he had somehow contrived to punch a wormhole right through the backdrop of the Trump-Clinton debate, political attention was largely concentrated a few thousand miles west of here this week.
Advisers concluded that they allowed the measure of bipartisanship to be defined as winning Republican votes rather than bringing civility to the debate, distracting attention from what have otherwise been major legislative victories.
In a warning to people who have so far given the referendum debate little attention, he said: "Centuries of history hang in the balance; a question mark hangs over the future of our United Kingdom.
