Opinion
Watching Biden v Trump? Don’t pass the popcorn, pass the sick bag
Nick Bryant
Journalist and authorIn a political landscape shaped so heavily by the norm-busting and now lawbreaking of its most loudmouthed protagonist, an irony of this week’s televised debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that so much attention ahead of time has focused on the rules.
The 90-minute primetime showdown will not feature a live audience, a departure from recent tradition although a return to the original format pioneered in 1960 during the first televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:
The candidates will not be able to refer to notes, or confer with campaign aides during the two commercial breaks. Most importantly of all, the microphones will be muted when candidates are not answering questions, an attempt to cut down on the 76 interruptions that marred their first encounter in 2020 when an exasperated Biden ended up exclaiming “will you shut up, man?” after being persistently heckled by Trump.
In the Biden camp, Bob Bauer, the president’s mild-mannered personal attorney who has been impersonating Trump during debate prep at Camp David, said this week that muted microphones would better serve the voter. It was a good thing, too, Bauer added, that no “beer tents” would be erected outside CNN’s studio in Atlanta – unlike at the university campuses which ordinarily host presidential debates – where partisan audience members could limber up with a few cocktails or “brewskis”.
Yet the Biden campaign should be careful of what it wishes for. Without a crowd to rabble-rouse or an open microphone to bellow into, Trump may be forced to become more civil. That could boomerang on Biden because the higher Trump’s volume, the more off-putting he will likely be to wavering voters who will decide this election.
The convicted felon could shoot the CNN sound technicians on set, and still command the loyalty of his MAGA camp followers. But the key demographic is voters with behavioural concerns about Trump, many of them prosperous women in the all-important suburbs of the all-important swing states, such as the “lace curtain” commuter belts of Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee.
Goaded by a live audience and tempted by an open mic, Trump might repeat some of the greatest hits from recent rallies, such as claiming that Biden received a “shot in the ass” ahead of the debate so that he would come out “all jacked up”.
Australian observers might also have noticed his recent rally rant in Las Vegas, when he pondered the dangers of sinking aboard a boat with a large battery in shark-infested waters, one of the life-or-death conundrums of our time. “Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted?” he asked his MAGA moshpit, “or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?” The jumping of sharks, of course, is something we have grown used to ever since Trump descended his golden escalator nine years ago this month. But the more Trump turns that TV studio in Atlanta into a shark tank, the better Biden’s chances of emerging unscathed.
By mocking Biden, and suggesting he’ll need performance-enhancing drugs to make it through 90 minutes, Trump has usefully lowered expectations for his opponent. But the 81-year-old president cannot simply run down the clock in the hope of avoiding a gaffe, a brain fade or an election-losing freeze. Biden needs to summon the same energy he exhibited in delivering his annual State of the Union address in March, a bravura performance in which he mounted a vigorous defence of his presidency.
Biden, after all, has a positive story to impart. Inflation has fallen to 3.27 per cent, a long way down from its 2022 peak of over 9 per cent. The trade deficit with China is at its lowest level in 14 years. True, the “felt economy” for millions of Americans is nowhere near as strong as the real thing. A recent poll suggested more than half of voters believe the US economy is in recession. But in tandem with the Federal Reserve, “Bidenomics” has tamed inflation without a dramatic spike in joblessness.
Television, of course, is an impressionistic medium, and televised debates linger in the memory not for the power of the messaging but rather for their memeable moments. The zingers, the gaffes and fiery exchanges which are run, ad nauseam, thereafter. The glaze of flop sweat that made Richard Nixon look so shifty was seen as a turning point in the 1960 campaign.
Ludicrous though it seems, when Biden and Trump come face to face in the first-ever debate between a sitting and former president, the future of US democracy could turn on one such split-second flashpoint. So we are in for an anxious watch. Not so much pass the popcorn, as pass the sick bag.
Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: American’s Unending Conflict with Itself.