Strip away the hype, nonsense and speculation surrounding Thursday’s presidential debate and the core narrative is this: Can Joe Biden make it through the debate?
In other words, is the 81-year-old president, with doubts about his stamina and acumen, persuasive and aggressive enough to turn the tide of the election?
But I think that might be the wrong question.
Unless the president wanders behind the curtains, there’s no way he won’t put in a reasonably strong performance after a week of preparation at Camp David. Of course, there’s the possibility he’ll stumble, get confused or look weak.
Biden ‘definitely’ has the edge ahead of debate: Howard Kurtz
But Biden will clear the incredibly low bar set by Donald Trump, his Republican allies and conservative pundits: He’s dazed, confused, absent-minded, doesn’t know where he is and can’t string two sentences together.
This portrayal is so ingrained that Trump’s last-minute attempts to course-correct (suddenly, Biden is a “respectable” debater who “beat” Paul Ryan in 2012) don’t have much effect.
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump speaks at the annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner hosted by the Minnesota Republican Party in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 17, 2024. Recent polls show President Joe Biden leading President Trump in the state by two percentage points. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
And if Biden holds on, most media outlets will declare him the winner and claim he has shattered the odds.
In my view, the bigger problem with CNN’s debate centers around Donald Trump.
Now the anti-Trump media is making a concerted effort to hammer home the message that the former president is losing his mind.
White House downplays Biden’s bad moment as fake
Trump speaks at length at rallies, entertaining his audiences with what he sees as half-joking and self-deprecating anecdotes.
But critics say Trump, 78, is letting his age show through his stream-of-consciousness digressions and detours.
So in a weekend speech in Philadelphia, Trump told a story (which may have been true, but not real) about a ship’s owner telling him he couldn’t switch to electric because the batteries were too big and would sink the ship.
And then there was his familiar lament about the shower.
Trump said he loves lathering his luscious hair because it thickens it, followed by a trickle of water (though we’re guessing the showers at Mar-a-Lago, Bedminister, and Trump Tower have plenty of pressure, at least).
Still, Trump knows the difference between performing for the pleasure of an enthusiastic crowd and nailing a debate, and no one questions his energy level, so it’s clear he’ll come out strong.
The Biden campaign claims that all of the videos disparagingly portraying Biden are fake, but that’s not true.
But what most people miss here is his level of discipline: Trump is more than capable of maintaining as much discipline as necessary.
I speak from personal experience: I interviewed the former president for an hour at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago, and he gave us some incisive, insightful talk.
Fully aware that my audience was more independent-minded, Trump had no trouble answering questions about topics that had only come up a few hours earlier: abortion, immigration, Israel, prosecution, Tik Tok, retaliation, law enforcement, etc. Trump made some harsh comments, especially about the 2020 election, but he also was unfazed by what he did in 1985. Trump acknowledged that he sometimes uses inflammatory language to drive the news cycle.
I was under no illusions that he had morphed into a different candidate. Within days, he was dropping grenades again. The risk for Trump this week is that he will lose his temper and launch vulgar attacks on Biden. But no one expects him not to go on the offensive.
Here’s how I see it playing out: Biden and Trump both do pretty well, and the president is vilified as a doddering old fool, so the media declares him the winner, as I said earlier.
But the bigger surprise in the Atlanta studio is how much more disciplined Trump seems, and he will also be helped by the lack of an audience and a rule that mutes microphones, which should help avoid the constant interruptions that marred the first 2020 debate.
Oh, Trump seems pretty serious. This isn’t the Trump I remember. More presidential. This may be a reaction from Republicans and independents who were opposed to Trump but would prefer a more toned-down version.
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Of course, debates are unpredictable and I could be wrong, but Joe Biden is not the only one capable of expressing different personas.
footnoteNeither president has debated in four years, so their rhetoric may be sluggish, but Trump has an advantage here, having given frequent TV, radio and podcast interviews that allow him to refine his answers — an exchange the incumbent president, who has largely avoided journalists and often shouted questions at them, is not used to.
