In 2020, following the first debate between then US president Donald Trump and Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden, I wrote about the “different rulebook” that applied to Trump, that he “would be called ‘presidential’ or at least ‘uncharacteristically sedate’ if he didn’t accuse Biden of being involved in the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan”.
There is a sense, four years later, that this tendency to grade on a curve has shifted to Biden. Today, at his first solo press conference for eight months, there was palpable human relief in the room whenever Biden got through a sentence without three words comingling, a long pause, or misidentify someone.
That sense of relief mostly held during his prepared remarks only to be immediately shattered during his first answer when, in response to a question about Vice President Kamala Harris, he said “I wouldn’t have picked vice president Trump to be vice president if I didn’t think she was qualified…”
This could have been predicted — earlier that day, he referred to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin”; there was a pause, some scattered applause, while Zelenskyy, a man who initially came to prominence in his home country as the star of an absurdist political satire, laughed in disbelief. Biden veered back to the mic and corrected himself: “President Putin? We’re gonna beat Putin. President Zelenskyy. I’m so focused on beating Putin. We gotta worry about it. Anyway…”
Following his disastrous performance at the presidential debate two weeks ago, the growing number of democratic politicians and fundraisers calling for Biden to pull out of the race has overshadowed this week’s NATO meeting in Washington. At time of writing, 15 Democrats had publicly said he needs to step aside — and for everyone speaking on the record, there are implied ripples of anonymous agreement. Dozens more apparently have statements drafted, ready to go after the press conference.
All the things that Biden campaigners would have been wincing in anticipation of happened — and all got worse as the press conference went on. The words sounded heavy sliding from his mouth, his voice tracing paper thin — he seemed to have been advised to turn that on its head, to lean towards the mic and whisper as a form of emphasis, as he did when he argued that “when unions do better, everyone does better” or that “no polls are saying that” he can’t win in November, but it felt unnatural and off-putting.
Incidentally, Australia will likely claim the honour of being featured in a great deal of Republican campaign material in coming months, given it prominently featured in one of Biden’s drifting moments. Listing countries at the NATO summit, he said “Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Australia… I already mentioned Australia”. At least he caught that one.
Perhaps worst of all was his frequent tendency to trail off, even during his more granular and detailed answers on foreign policy issues or his own legislative achievements, and to end the silence with a tired “look, folks…” or “…anyway.”
He needed a flawless performance. Indeed, he needed to be flawless during more or less every speech and appearance between the debate and November, and even that might not have been enough. This was not a flawless performance, whatever his team told journalists about him “knocking it out of the park”.
The president properly raised his voice only once — mid-answer to a question about why he was still running (and every question was about why he was still running, one way or another), he turned to America’s perpetual gun violence crisis. The obviously, inarguably diminished 81-year-old campaigning for another four years in possibly the world’s most demanding job, running against a man who more or less explicitly promises to gut what remains of US democracy, was suddenly moved to mention that American children are more likely to die because of a bullet than any other cause.
“What the hell are we doing?” Biden shouted. “What are we doing?”
