President Joe Biden’s recent debate with Republican opponent Donald Trump has been criticized for several reasons, including his over-training and over-practiced approach. Critics argue that Biden’s performance during the debate was a result of his senior advisers’ decisions, which they now view as wrong-headed. Trump, who repeated falsehoods during the 90-minute debate, including claims that he actually won the 2020 election, failed to refute them, leading to calls from Democrats for him to end his quest for a second term and for “soul-searching” or resignations among top aides.
Biden’s debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former Barack Obama campaign strategist, backed that strategy. Confidence went into the event, as Trump was convicted of falsifying documents by a jury in New York on May 31, while Biden held back-to-back visits in Europe.
Advisers set up a rigorous debate prep calendar, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days. An inner circle, some close to Biden for decades, were involved in the preparation, including Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and Dunn’s husband Bob Bauer, and long-time adviser Mike Donilon. Biden’s campaign said on Friday that no staff shake-up was under consideration.
Biden’s trips abroad, especially to France earlier this month, generated Republican social media clips poking fun at his age but also showed him as a strong leader on an international stage. White House aides who traveled with the president were in a good mood as he headed to Camp David on June 21. They believed that Biden was going into the debate with the most precious political asset: momentum, the wind at his back.
Biden had flown to France, back to the United States, to Italy, and to the West Coast, among other travels, over a 14-day period before taking just a few days to rest at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Critics say now that the preparation should have focused on the bigger vision he needs to sell to the country, and that Biden had insufficient rest headed into the debate.
Run down, Biden would also catch a small cold, as he has regularly during his term after long stretches of time zone-bending work. The result, critics say, was candidate Biden at his worst: he appeared on stage with his face wan, his hair straggly at his collar, and his voice hoarse. Critics say that this was always going to be a matter of presentation and cosmetics, and superficial judgments that were going to be made about his performance.
Earlier this year, some Biden aides discussed whether he should debate Trump at all, arguing that it could give Trump a broad public platform that would disadvantage Biden. Then Biden himself delivered a decision on debating Trump that was a surprise to some advisers.
Biden’s team decided to reject three long-scheduled presidential debates in September and October organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, still smarting over the group’s handling of the 2020 debates. Trump repeatedly violated the rules of what would be a chaotic first debate in 2020, showing up despite having tested positive for COVID-19 and talking over Biden relentlessly. His team tried to set the contest on their own terms, with what they saw as a more pliant host in CNN.
The day after the debate, Biden bounced back with a forceful speech in North Carolina and a pledge to keep going. Many donors and Democrats are rallying around him. However, the damage has been done. Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC that there are honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of the Democratic Party, because it is a political party and we have differences in point of view.