President Joe Biden’s main goal Thursday should have been to appear strong and put concerns about his age to rest. Simply put, he missed the mark. Appearances should not matter, but they do. And for much of the debate telecast, viewers were treated to a distracting split screen; the president appeared slacked-jawed, with a horribly frozen look on his face.
Trump continued to spew lie after lie after lie. He deflected and caveated and made bizarre, easily disproven assertions.
Trump continued to spew lie after lie after lie. He deflected and caveated and made bizarre, easily disproven assertions about economics, his own policies, global power dynamics and his recent felony conviction. But to paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, it can be better to be strong and wrong then weak and right. Every question presented a new opportunity, but Biden was swinging and missing at nearly every turn.
Biden also seemed perhaps over prepared. He came to Atlanta armed with reams of data and details. But he also seemed more concerned about getting through his talking points than rebutting what Trump said (or didn’t say). He wasn’t nimble, especially at the beginning of the evening. He stumbled and stopped and tried to correct himself. He eschewed passion for statistics.
Unfortunately, I think Biden was having a problem delivering strong responses because he was trying to remember his notes instead of going with his gut. This did not work well. For example, when asked about abortion, one of the most important issues in the campaign, his answer was … fine. But fine does not really cut it when the stakes are so high. Then he took the bait when Trump brought up abortions at nine months. Biden should have known to move on, but he didn’t.
Toward the end, things went completely off the rails. A current president and a former president started bragging about their golf handicaps like a pair of schoolchildren. This is something we expect Trump to brag about. And when Biden decided, wrongly, to wade into the fraught waters of presidential physical fitness, he just couldn’t deliver the lines. Thankfully, Biden didn’t challenge Trump to another pushup contest. At the end of the day, Trump offered the voters very little outside his typical menu of falsehoods and rambling, confounding stories. He uttered the instantly iconic sentence “I did not have sex with a porn star.” And yet, he was still able to dominate the debate, at least in terms of quick-turn perceptions. As many people will likely note over the next hours and days and weeks, it is still June. Biden may have another debate — currently scheduled for September — to prove himself. He will also have time to refocus and recast himself to voters and the party ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. Hopefully, he makes the most of it.
Susan Del Percio is a Republican strategist and a political analyst for MS NOW. 
