On Tuesday, we’ll see a presidential debate that matters
Six decades have passed since debates last had a consequential role in a U.S. presidential election.
RichardNixon’s decision to eschew makeup and perspire profusely under television lights, appearing at least uncomfortable, and at worst nervous and perhaps even a tad shifty — especially in contrast to his immaculately coiffed, well-prepared, debonair adversary with a sense of humor matched with a high-wattage smile, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Even so, historians are less than unanimous in their assessment of whether Kennedy orNixon emerged victorious from that generally conceded most relevant presidential debate.
While those watching that historic spectacle on television gave the edge to the cucumber cool Massachusetts senator, thosewhoheardit onradio, and notprivy to Nixon’s sweat-storm, were equally certain that the vice presidentwas the winner.
The consensus is that Kennedy was the beneficiary of that head-to-head confrontation. Considering that Kennedy won the 1960 election by less than 119,000 of more than 68 million votes cast, there remain questions regarding whether the debate pushedhimacross the finish line or allowed Nixon to nearly catch him in the homestretch.
Formore reasons than there is roomhere to enumerate, the 2020 presidential debates, which kick off Tuesday, will be far different.
Beset with a plethora of grave circumstances ranging from an outrageously mishandled pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans, uprisings to protest police brutality against Black citizens, escalating unemployment, and everdiminishing respect for the United States within the international community, President Donald J. Trump has the Sisyphean task of convincing the electorate that he deserves a second term.
A master of deflection and obfuscation, Trump will make every effort to shift responsibility and accountability fromhimself to someone else: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, MickeyMouse. Anyone other than himself.
Trump’s primary job Tuesday night is to rattle Biden, to turn him into the dithering “Sleepy Joe” caricature of an over-the-hill politician that the president has worked overtime to portray.
WhatTrump is likely to underestimate is the stark fact that Biden, has devoted his life to eating, sleeping, and dreaming policy and politics. Still, it is well known that Biden is gaffe-prone.
Biden-watchers are also well aware that when he does stumble, or misspeak, he more often than not corrects himself immediately. When Trump “misspeaks,” it is usually as a result of his propensity for talking off the top of his self-styled “very stable genius” brain — so stable that he is obviously infallible. Thus, it is his natural instinct to double down on whatever stretch of truth or outright lie that he has just uttered.
So commonplace has Trump’s stream of conscious blather become that early in his presidency, his loyalistswere urging the rest of us to not listen to what he says, but rather watch what he does.
I’ve tried this and found it even more frightening: Don’t wear a mask during a pandemic for which there is no vaccine, swallowsome bleach to cure yourself of the coronavirus, send your kids back to school because they are, like, practically immune. And that’s just the very stable genius’s medical advice, which he’s entitled to dispense because, after all, he has an uncle who taught at M.I.T. So, naturally, that means he has genius genes. Blah, blah, blah.
We are told that Trump has waved off efforts to prepare for the first debate. He obviously knows more about military strategy than all of his generals combined because he went to a military high school. And for reasons discussed earlier, he, of course, knows more than the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration scientists, for reasons mentioned earlier.
Biden’s job Tuesday night mostly will be to reinforce his image as respectful, knowledgeable, empathetic, compassionate, and, by the way, prepared. His most difficult job will be to keep his cool, to not allow the distraction meister to divert his attention and, perhaps even more important, to contain his anger and indignation while sharing the stage with such a singularly unworthy opponent.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t feel Biden should debate Trump, a widely recognized congenital liar, at all. But Biden would not be dissuaded.
Tuesday night is the moment he’swaited for a good part of his life. If all that stands in hisway is Donald J. Trump, so be it.