About an hour before last night’s presidential debate I jotted down what I thought the two candidates needed to do to win.

Trump: Have a concise rebuttal to The New York Times tax story, while reminding Americans that he cut taxes for almost everyone and that Democrats are promising to raise their taxes. He should focus on the booming pre-Covid economy and pledge to bring it back. He ought to brag about his peace initiatives in the Middle East and his efforts to bring the troops home from that region. Talk about the violence rocking American cities and Biden’s reluctance to condemn it. He needs to refrain from name calling.

Biden: Appear alert and speak in complete sentences.

Yes, there was a low bar for the former vice president and he passed. Not that he appeared any more presidential than the man who currently holds the office. In fact, it was Biden who launched the first ad hominem attacks, ultimately calling the president a “clown,” a “liar” and a “fool,” telling Trump to “shut up, man” and “stop yapping.”

Fifteen minutes into the debate it had already devolved into an out-of-control brawl. Both Trump and Biden repeatedly interrupted and talked over one another and ignored the moderator who helplessly called for order.

By the end of the 96-minute slugfest it was hard to declare a winner. Trump dominated, certainly. But Biden was still standing. 

During the course of the evening the well-rehearsed Biden tried to distance himself from the far-left in his party, while saying the $100 trillion Green New Deal “would pay for itself” and in one of the dumbest remarks ever made by the candidate, he asserted that “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.” Oh, and Biden denied that he ever called soldiers “stupid bastards.” (It’s on tape.)

Trump, who had done his homework as some feared he wouldn’t, was all over the place, briefly alluding to just-released documents that purport to show that Hillary Clinton tried to cook up a Russian scandal about him during the 2016 campaign, a revelation so new most folks didn’t know about it. He, too, engaged in personal attacks, telling Biden “there’s nothing smart about you” and saying that Biden was holding small events not because of the pandemic, but because no one would come.

It was, in the words of CNN’s Dana Bash, “a shit show.”

The big loser? Fox’s Chris Wallace. He never got control of the debate, he asked terrible questions and he allowed the candidates to duck the few good ones he posed.

Wallace’s most egregious mistake? Asking Biden if he - like other Democrats - favors ending the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. That’s a critical issue, one that Biden must address.

But Biden refused to answer.

“Whatever position I take, that’ll be the issue,” Biden replied nonsensically.

And the moderator didn’t press him.

Chris Wallace should never be asked to moderate another debate for that colossal whiff alone.

But there’s more.

Later, Wallace actually repeated the lie that Democrats like to tell, that Trump was talking about white supremacists when he said there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville. The president was clear in the aftermath of the riots that he was talking about those who want to preserve the historical statues, not the nazis and KKK members who were there.

Using DNC talking points in a debate question is inexcusable.

Not since October 2012, when Candy Crowley famously “fact checked” Mitt Romney’s correct assertion that it took Barack Obama 14 days to call the attack on Benghazi an act of terrorism, has a debate moderator performed so miserably.

Due to Covid, the two candidates did not shake hands at the beginning or end of the debate. 

That seems about right. These two really don’t like each other.

After Tuesday’s chaos in Cleveland, even Chris Wallace’s dog doesn’t like him.