Joe Biden may have already made his biggest debate gaffe
But I still think he will out-perform expectations on Thursday night
The Atlanta stage is set for the first presidential match-up of the year as Trump and Biden face off on Thursday evening.
The media is in overdrive, the historical debate highlights reels are playing. The pollsters are starting up too: I will be there, conducting a snap poll on the findings.
The public have expectations too, and they are not good for Joe Biden. Two weeks ago I revealed a poll at a panel my firm had put together in Washington DC. The results are damning for the president.
Seven in ten anticipate that he will forget his words. Fully half of Americans expect him to forget where he is. Four in ten expect him to walk off the wrong side of the stage, and another forty per cent think he will even have trouble standing.
Republicans and Trump himself have tried to temper expectations but the former president has not been able to resist leaning into the chatter. “He’s practising how to stand”, he said in his Newsmax interview earlier this week.
The numbers are brutally telling about the public’s faith in the president’s ability to govern effectively. But I suspect they may work in Biden’s favor on Thursday night.
We have seen it happen already this year at the State of the Union address: Republicans let expectations focus on whether Biden would even be able to get a word out. Instead he delivered a confident if shouty performance and bucked expectations.
It is true Biden will not have an autocue or a script this time. There will be moments of genuine - and probably concerning - lapse, and these will be clipped and circulated on social media. But of all the moments this year where Biden’s performance is going to be watched in long-form and in the round, increasing his chance of getting the benefit of the doubt from viewers, this is it.
I have long thought the person most at risk from the debates was Donald Trump. In 2020 the first presidential debate reminded voters of all of the attributes about Trump they liked the least: a chaotic temperament, an aggressive style, a rude man ready to shout over his opponents no matter what. The performance was a personification of the Trump drama voters had grown to despise. There are rumors since that this was made worse by a cocktail of anti-Covid steroids.
On paper, this looked set to repeat itself. Eight in ten Americans expect Trump to interrupt Biden during the debate.
But the Biden White House may have made a serious blunder. In the debate specifications, which they had the most control over since they pitched the idea, the Biden team asked for microphones to be cut off when it is not someone’s dedicated speaking time.
You can see the temptation: Trump’s interruptions clearly frustrated Biden no end four years ago. But it makes it a lot harder for Trump to repeat the errors of that debate and show off his worst side. It gives Trump set time to get his talking points across, and limits his opportunity to interrupt or aggravate. It helps to control Trump’s worst instincts where Trump’s self-control is lacking.
Maybe I am wrong, and a furious Trump gesticulating in silence says it all. But we know that Trump has a penchant for a narrative about the establishment trying to quieten him. Those narratives resonate in the wake of the legal cases brought against him and likely offset the damage.
Our snap poll will tell us who wins. My bet is that Biden exceeds expectations, but any chance at a clear win is made more difficult by the gaffe he has already made on the rule on microphones and speaking time.