With only days to go before a debate that could disrupt the dynamic of an excruciatingly close race, it would appear that Donald Trump is finally recognizing the perils that go with constantly portraying his opponent as a feeble, doddering old man.
Trump now describes President Biden as a “worthy debater.” Indeed, a formidable one. “I watched him with Paul Ryan, and he destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said in an interview last week, referring to Biden’s vice-presidential debate against Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. “I’m not underestimating him.”
To Team Biden, that comment delivered an important bit of intelligence: This time around, Trump is actually buckling down to prepare. This is a far cry from Trump’s attitude toward their initial debate stage faceoff in 2020, when the positions of the incumbent president and his challenger were reversed.
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At what was supposed to be his first prep session, held at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club, the then-president opened with the words: “What the f--- am I doing here?”
“I know how to do this,” Trump said. “I’m already the president.” Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who was running the exercise, gave him a list of his predecessors who had coasted on similar self-confidence as they ran for a second term, only to belly flop in their first debates. Christie recounted the episode in his 2021 book, “Republican Rescue.”
Trump grudgingly accepted some reading material and said he might take a look at it. Judging by his unhinged performance at that first debate, he didn’t — or take much of the advice he received, including Christie’s parting admonition to “let Biden talk. … He’ll hang himself.” By a Post count, he interrupted Biden more than 70 times.
Trump recognized how badly he had lost in that first outing against Biden. At their second debate, he was more restrained — aided by the fact that each candidate’s microphone was muted for portions of the evening.
This time, Trump has assembled a more strategic and disciplined campaign team than he had in his past two presidential races, and Biden’s advisers expect the former president to come out on Thursday night with a battle plan. Whether he can stick to it for an hour and a half is another question.
What has also belatedly sunk in for Trump, as evidenced by his comments last week, is the importance of the time-honored practice of raising expectations about how his opponent will perform. In 2004, President George W. Bush’s chief strategist Matthew Dowd went so far as to declare Democratic nominee John F. Kerry to be “the best debater ever to run for President” and even “better than Cicero.”
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Both campaigns have cleared their candidates’ public schedules between now and Thursday, so that they can practice and prepare.
Don’t expect any groundbreaking policy pronouncements on Thursday night. Given the nature of this year’s debate — a current and a former president side-by-side on the stage — the candidates’ positions on the issues are pretty familiar at this point. However, CNN’s capable moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will surely try to pin both down on their plans for the next four years, and where those plans contradict their records.
What viewers will no doubt be measuring most closely is their performances. Does Biden, at 81, appear up to another four years in the job? And is Trump, at 78, too unstable to hold it again?
It is a welcome development that the debate in Atlanta will be taking place without a live audience, which can turn into a distracting cheering section. This is something I have argued in favor of for years — a throwback to the storied 1960 debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, which took place in a TV studio.
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But there will also be another twist: strict time limits on how long each candidate can talk, with the microphones muted, except for the one whose turn it is to speak.
According to the CNN memo distributed to the two campaigns, each candidate will have two minutes to answer a question; his opponent, one minute for rebuttal, and then the first candidate will get another minute for a response to that rebuttal. The moderators will have discretion to determine whether an additional minute for rebuttal or clarification is warranted.
I’m skeptical as to how this will actually work in practice. The rules — which are ones the Biden campaign insisted upon — are designed to prevent a repeat of Trump’s 2020 interruptathon. But will the network really choose to get in the way of the candidates’ ability to engage each other in a more productive fashion, should that occur?
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CNN has been cagey as to how closely it will enforce its own rules, but indications are that someone in the control room will have the ability to override the muting of the microphones.
Will any of this actually change the course of a contest between two unpopular candidates? Most of the electorate is dug into one camp or the other. But with a race this close, it won’t take all that many votes to make a big difference. Whether those crucial disengaged voters actually have the stomach to watch is the real question.
What will you be looking for in the 2024 presidential debates? Is there anything either candidate could say to change your mind? Share your responses with us.
