What American voters really want to know

But everybody is abashed by the tastelessness – nay, the vulgarity, the unspeakable foulness – of the questions. It will be argued that the level of discourse in the current campaign has already sunk to hitherto-unplumbed depths; and to allow it to sink further would be unthinkable to all civilised minds.

However, I believe that this obstacle to candour can be overcome by linguistic manipulation – that is, by judicious phrasing of the questions in elegant terms that will soften their rudeness and be acceptable even to the genteel readers of The Nation. Hence, I believe that, at the commencement of the next debate, the moderator, Anderson Cooper, should pose these two questions:

1. Mrs Clinton, can you identify any shortcomings in your personal sexual repertoire that might have inspired your husband to seek succour elsewhere? 

2. Mr Trump, in view of Marco Rubio’s concern about the size of your hands and its possible relationship to other appendages, would you be willing, in the interest of total transparency, to subject your organ of concern to public scrutiny, to be measured, weighed, photographed, and filmed in both stark black-and-white and glorious Technicolor, in both flaccid and erect modes, with the results to be broadcast on Fox News and CNN and posted on YouTube, to assure the electorate of your manly fitness to be their president?

We might also seek testimony from Bill Clinton and from Mr Trump’s ex-wives on these seminal issues.

Having sunk as low as we can possibly go, we can then rebound and pivot to issues of greater substance.

Always trying to be helpful,

Ye Olde Pedant