Perspective:
A former congressman argues that the Trump administration is about to make it harder and more expensive to get prescription drugs and at the worst possible time — a pandemic.
There has been speculation, largely coming from the right, that Joe Biden will refuse to debate President Donald Trump. This speculation is built around the characterization — with Fox News acting as the chief promulgator — that the 77-year-old former vice president has become feeble of mind and his handlers won’t let him near the great debater that is Trump.
Helping inflate the speculation was an
Aug. 3 commentary in the New York Times, “Let’s Scrap the Presidential Debates,” by veteran journalist Elizabeth Drew that made the case the debates are largely useless and not a test of the skills necessary to be a good president. Instead of rewarding substance, she argued, debates reward pithy or cutting comments that are later endlessly repeated by the media.
She certainly has a point in making that latter observation.
Pundits on the right began to speculate that Drew was being used to soften the field in preparation for Biden backing out. Her denial in the column that this had anything to do with saving Biden only fed the conjecture.
“This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests,” she wrote.
The Editorial Board at the Wall Street Journal further inflated this balloon with an editorial, “Will Joe Biden Duck the Debates?”
“It’s becoming a theme in certain quarters ... that Mr. Biden should skip out,’’ the editorial stated. Except for Drew’s op-ed, however, the editorial didn’t reference the “certain
quarters” for this “theme.”
The Commission on the Presidential Debates has scheduled three debates — on Sept. 26, Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 — and Biden has said he will be there, as has Trump. In fact, Trump says he wants more debates. Please spare us, three is quite enough.
Biden has had some cringe-worthy moments, no doubt. In one Democratic primary debate, he urged his fellow debaters to stop attacking each other with this plea: “We cannot get reelect, we cannot win this reelection, excuse me, we can only reelect Donald Trump, if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here.”
Then there was this bizarre recommendation, made in another primary debate, about how parents should parent. “Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night.”
Yeah, the kids will love that. Finding an excuse not to debate would be a monumental mistake by Biden. It would serve as confirmation that he is seriously slipping mentally. I would be shocked if it happened. As for Biden’s propensity for foot-in-mouth statements, they are hardly new.
He has described himself as a “gaffe machine.” At a campaign stop in Missouri in 2008, then vice-presidential nominee Biden exhorted state Sen. Chuck Graham to stand up for a round of applause. Graham has been a paraplegic since a car accident he had at age 16.
And recall him whispering, audibly, “This is a big (expletive) deal,” when introducing President Barack Obama to discuss passage of the Affordable Care Act.
The good news for Biden is that his critics, and President Trump, have provided him a very low bar.
“He doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know what he’s doing and our country will suffer,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “Biden can’t put two sentences together,” he said in his recent interview with Chris Wallace.
If Biden keeps his cool, supplies direct answers and limits the convoluted commentaries, he wins. Voters will question what all the fuss was about. If the cognitive issues are real, on the other hand, we will all find out. And we should. Plus, don’t forget Trump is quite capable of saying stupid things.
As for the usefulness of political debates, my thinking is similar to that which British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill observed about democracy in 1947: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”
So too, debates. The alternative to putting the presidential candidates on the spot, to having them respond to journalists’ questions and to each other, is a campaign of speeches, slick commercials that sell the candidate like a commodity, and attack ads filled with half-truths or outright lies.
I’ve moderated and/or served as questioner in dozens of debates from selectmen to governors to U.S. senators. These debates don’t provide a voter all they need to know, but they can be a vital tool in casting an informed vote.
Unlike Drew, I look forward to Trump vs. Biden.