SAN DIEGO — Are America's best debates behind us? Unfortunately, it appears so.

There is no more humor like when Republican challenger Ronald Reagan told President Jimmy Carter with a smile: "There you go again." There are no memorable zingers.

These days, when two candidates square off, Americans know we're not going to get Lincoln and Douglas. But do we always have to wind up with Abbott and Costello?

I listened to the beginning of this week's debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris from Philadelphia on the radio, and I watched the rest of it on television. The next day, I read the official transcript.

The more I took in, the more I came back to my first impression: One of these people cannot be allowed to be president again. The other isn't ready to be president at all.

Neither of the candidates answered the questions, instilled confidence or provided a clear vision of where they intended to take America. Both changed the subject, fell back on talking points and insulted each other in the ugliest terms.

The entire dynamic came down to Harris baiting Trump — on everything from the size of his inheritance to whether the crowds at his rallies get bored and leave — and Trump taking the bait every time.

Both Harris and Trump walked in the National Constitution Center with something to prove.

Harris needed to open up and share more of her own personal story with voters so that they could feel more comfortable hiring her to do the most important job in the world.

In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 28% of likely voters said they needed to learn more about the vice president compared to only 9% who said the same about Trump. Voters wanted to hear where Harris stands on issues and whether there was — on some of the tougher ones — any daylight between her and President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump had to show that he had the discipline to quit the personal attacks about his opponent's intelligence and appearance and focus instead on the failures of the Biden administration — including the bungled pullout from Afghanistan, the spike in inflation and the crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But as we all know, the former president is always his own worst enemy. He must think of himself as a pit bull. But he's more like a kitten chasing a laser pointer. And throughout this debate, it was Harris who held the pointer and controlled his every move.

This helps explain why the media — which is already inclined to be anti-Trump and pro-Harris — were so quick to declare the Democrat the winner. NPR's Leila Fadel described the vice president's performance as "dominant."

Let's not get carried away. That kind of language is overly generous and cannot be substantiated by what happened in Philadelphia.

The first debate, in June, between Biden and Trump showed that just because one of the participants lost a debate doesn't mean that the other participant won it. In the earlier matchup, Biden imploded. But the performance that Trump turned in was so subpar that he didn't deserve to be called the winner.

It's the same thing with the most recent debate. Trump clearly lost the exchange. He didn't prepare. He let his anger get the best of him. He rambled and ranted. And he let loose with a flurry of careless and crazy rhetoric, such as when he claimed — without any evidence to back it up — that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating house pets.

But none of that means that Harris "won" the debate. You do that by putting points on the board, and that's hard to do when you're ducking every question and shifting attention back to your opponent.

When ABC News' David Muir, one of the co-moderators, asked Harris about the economy, she responded by accusing Trump of resorting to "the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling." When Muir asked why the Biden administration had preserved tariffs initiated by its predecessor, Harris said Trump's policies "invited trade wars" and that the former president "sold us out" by selling American computer chips to China. And when Muir asked why the Biden administration waited so long to take action to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, Harris chose instead to talk about how Trump had torpedoed a border enforcement bill worked out in Congress and how Trump supporters leave his rallies "out of exhaustion and boredom."

No one won this debate. But we know who lost. The American people.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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