A Presidential Debate As Theatre

“Her advantage is that [Hillary Clinton] knows her text inside out. She’s like one of those actors — Maggie Smith is reported to be one — who are always studying backstage, underlining and dog-earing their script. [Barack Obama] is the far better Method actor of the two. Which is to say there’s less of a visible gap between the role he’s playing and the self he has freely exposed since he became a marquee draw.”