Biden versus Trump
By NICK DAZANG
WHEN he picked the gauntlet to debate former President Donald Trump, President Biden chose the platform. He chose the Cable Network News, CNN. He then retreated to Camp David with a retinue of aides and pundits who prepped and spruced him up. Consequently, everyone expected a stellar performance. Everyone expected a repeat of the gravitas he displayed in trouncing Trump in 2020. And everyone expected him to acquit himself in such a decisive fashion as to finally allay concerns over his age and capacity.
Alas, when he faced Trump in the first tier, high-stakes presidential debate at the CNN Headquarters at Atlanta, Georgia, recently, it was an anti-climax and a reversal. President Biden was incoherent. His voice was raspy. At one point, he simply blanked out. Rather than dispel the acute concerns about his age and competence, he confirmed them by his dismal performance and frail carriage. Everyone who watched the debate was shocked and dismayed by President Biden’s mediocre performance.
President Biden failed woefully to seize the debate and to deploy it to underscore his accomplishments since assuming office. Neither did he speak eloquently to how Donald Trump had assumed a clear and present danger to democracy, a leitmotif that had run through his pronouncements and the motivation he has touted for seeking a second term. Everyone who watched the debate was bewildered at President Biden’s less than superlative performance. It was like a train wreck or an accident in slow motion. Someone said it “felt as painful as getting through a wisdom tooth withdrawal”. Even bigwigs of the Democratic Party admitted that they had a problem. One of them said: ”It’s hard to argue that Biden should be the nominee.”
It took his Vice, Kamala Harris, who had been driven to the margins of the Biden presidency and the Biden campaign to effect an immediate damage control. CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who interviewed her, was bewildered as to why Biden could not articulate the points which she did, with smoothness and ease, about abortion rights, America’s infrastructure renewal, and the global leadership which President Biden had provided in the past three and a half years. Even though his performance was not exquisite either, the fact that Biden’s was lackluster, made Trump’s a commanding one. Trump deftly took advantage of Biden’s shortcomings, not only to clobber the President, but to taunt and provoke him. The Liar-in-Chief used the opportunity to peddle 39 falsehoods as against Biden’s nine and to put a spin on them.
As if that were not enough, Trump preyed on the shortcomings of the Biden administration with devastating effect. He reeled out, with relish, the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which occurred on Biden’s watch. He needled Biden on the high cost of living and attacked the upsurge of immigrants at America’s southern border. Biden failed, spectacularly, to respond in kind, and to call attention to the economic meltdown that characterized the twilight of the Trump administration. He failed to call attention to the clumsy manner Trump handled the COVID-19 pandemic and the avoidable deaths that ensued.
President Biden’s performance was so dismal that the New York Times asked him to step down. It wrote in an editorial: ”At Thursday’s debate, the President needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago. The president appeared on Thursday night as a shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”
Most Democratic Party leaders, in a show of solidarity, have attempted to downplay this fiasco and to cast it merely as “a bad night”. The Democratic Party clan, led by former President Barack Obama, admitted that Biden had a “slow” start in the debate. They insisted that the election was still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary people his entire life and someone who only cared about himself. Said Obama: ”Between someone who tells the truth – who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight – and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit. Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.” Influential Congressman, Rev. Al Sharpton, brushed off calls for Biden to step down. He argued: ”He’s taken some lickings before, but he keeps kicking and that’s what I think he can sell.”
Whether Biden will hearken to the New York Times remains to be seen. With five months to the election and another one month to the Democratic Party convention that will endorse his nomination, it is a decision which only President Biden can make. Thus far, the White House and the Biden Campaign have said the president is in the contest for the long haul. Besides, Biden has cast this election as an opportunity to salvage democracy from the claws of Trump whose distemper and contempt for due process is legendary. He has also assumed the role of messiah in this salvage effort.
Reacting to calls that Biden should step down, pundits say it will be foolhardy for Biden to do so when the election is afoot. Historian, Allan Litchtman, who has successfully predicted past presidential election winners based on key yardsticks, told CNN’s Abby Phillip that it would be a mistake for the Democratic Party to replace Biden at this juncture. He said the same argument of age was used against President Ronald Reagan, then 73 years, and that he proceeded to win the presidency, nonetheless.
As if to make up for his abysmally poor performance, President Biden issued a fiery speech at a campaign rally in North Carolina, shortly after the presidential debate. He also mollified voters by remarking that: ”I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth…I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done.”
Great! But why did he not bring the same verve and savvy to the debate where and when it mattered most? Why did he have to come strong and to find his voice only when Trump had taken the shine off him? And why did he have to traumatise the world by his woeful performance?
Dazang, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Abuja
Culled from the Vanguard.
Photo Credit: Wilkipedia
