June 28, 2024, 12:20 a.m.
A remarkably stable presidential race frozen in place for 10 months got a monumental shake-up Thursday night after President Biden delivered a widely panned performance of meandering answers and a failure to score points even when former President Trump gave him obvious targets.
Americans who tuned in to the year’s first presidential debate saw two old men look at America through a rearview mirror, hurl often childish insults at each other, and leave no doubt of their mutual dislike for each other. After 90 minutes of acrimony, it was clear that Biden was the older man. His halting answers and general lack of sharpness immediately triggered panic among Democrats, compounded doubts about his age, and fueled calls within the party to replace him as the nominee even at this late date.
Trump ducked questions, mangled facts, mugged for the cameras, and offered no new reasons for undecided voters to join his cause. But he was far more focused than the president. He hammered home his message of the incumbent’s “incompetence" repeatedly through the debate. Even after 90 minutes, it was unclear what Biden’s message was.
One Democratic strategist involved in past presidential debates was dismayed as he watched the performance by Biden. “He’s proven he can count to two,” he said when the president started another response by numbering his answer. Allowed to speak on background to get his candid analysis, the strategist said, “Biden looks and sounds like he was let out of the home for the evening.”
A prominent Democratic strategist who has worked four presidential elections could manage only a single word: “Terrible.” At the debate’s conclusion, he was more glum. “To save our country, to save democracy, he should step aside,” he said. “But I would be surprised if that happens.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who is anti-Trump, was similarly dismayed. “This is embarrassing for the country. If this were a fight, they would have called it after 30 minutes,” he told National Journal. “Biden is making old men look bad. Speaking as a consultant, his team should be embarrassed for allowing him to make himself look this bad.”
The president failed on all the points he was expected to make. He seemed unprepared when the discussion turned to abortion, letting Trump get away with his claim that Democrats want to kill babies after they are born. He even wandered in his closing statement. His most-used phrase all night was, “By the way,” three words that made it into most of his answers.
When Biden stumbled in one answer, Trump shot back, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knew what he said, either.”
Trump was less frenetic and bullying than he was in the Trump-Biden debates of 2020. But he repeatedly resorted to childish taunts of the president, even mocking his golf prowess.
Not to be outdone, Biden said Trump had “the morals of an alleycat,” was a whiner, a complainer, a loser, and a liar, and pointedly recalled him having sex with porn star Stormy Daniels “while your wife was pregnant.” Trump shot back, “I did not have sex with a porn star” and repeatedly called the president a liar and a “criminal.” At one point, he mockingly called the president “Brandon.” When Trump denied calling veterans “suckers” and “losers,” Biden said Trump was the sucker and loser.
Never has a presidential debate been more mired in the past. That is not entirely surprising for a match between a president and a former president, both with actions to defend and records to attack. Still, it is deeply disappointing for an electorate that has a right to hear more about what these candidates want to do in the coming four years than what they did four or eight years ago.
Perhaps it was foolish to hope for more of a discussion of the future from the oldest-ever candidates to step onto a debate stage. Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, brought a combined age of 159 years to Atlanta, almost double the John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon combined age of 90 at the first presidential debate in 1960.
When Biden and Trump did deign to glance ahead, it was almost always less about outlining their own plans and more about warning of dire consequences if the other were to win.
Biden wanted to defend his accomplishments in office, remind voters of the chaos of the Trump years, and cast the soon-to-be-official Republican nominee as unfit for the nation’s highest office.
But the president, after going back on his 2020 promise to be a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders, had a bigger need in Atlanta. He needed to show sufficient vigor and stamina across the 90 minutes to at least partially allay the widespread belief that he is too old for another term. He needed to make the case that it’s OK for the world’s most powerful nation to have an 86-year-old at the helm at the end of his term.
He did not make that case. The meme-makers were poised to capture any vacant stare, any verbal tic, any lost train of thought. He gave them a lot to work with. The only good news for Biden is that because this was the earliest-ever debate, there are 131 days left to try to repair the damage. How he does that, though, is difficult to foresee.
Tom DeFrank contributed to this article.
