Biden was not perfect. But his debate performance easily cleared the low bar set by Trump.
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Version 0 of 1. Joseph R. Biden Jr. cast the first presidential debate as a leadership test for President Trump; Mr. Trump framed it as cognitive test for a supposedly senile Mr. Biden. One of them passed. While Mr. Biden did not deliver a stellar performance on Tuesday — and the mud-spattered spectacle in Cleveland left no participant unsullied — he was good enough, easily surpassing the low expectations set for him by a Trump campaign that portrayed him as a doddering weakling incapable of facing an alpha president. Mr. Biden, who has kept a relatively low profile since securing the Democratic nomination, arguably had more to lose going in: He was shaky in some primary debates and has kept a light public schedule, in part to allow his opponent, who craves the spotlight, to roast in it alone. But the former vice president, who turns 78 next month, had the physical stamina to stand comfortably upright for 90 minutes — an ability that aides to Mr. Trump, 74, had literally questioned leading up to the debate. And while Mr. Biden was often overshadowed and outshouted, he executed his main goal of presenting a stable contrast to the man beside him, despite a few word fumbles and some heated retorts directed at the heckling president, whom he called a “clown” and a “fool.” At no point did Mr. Biden seem disoriented, demented, drugged or unable to cogently answer any of the policy questions put to him, even as Mr. Trump blared into his right ear like a boombox with a busted volume knob. It was noteworthy that Trump stalwarts like Sean Hannity, who have loudly questioned Mr. Biden’s mental acuity, mostly avoided the topic in post-debate wrap-ups. One of the few politically coherent lines of attack pursued by Mr. Trump was to accuse Mr. Biden of being a Trojan Horse for radical leftists — figuring he would either have to hug progressives and thereby alienate moderates, or distance himself, risking a revolt on the left. The centrist former vice president chose to emphatically distance himself from his party’s progressive wing and threw in a low-key “l’etat, c’est moi” declaration. When the president accused him, falsely, of supporting “socialist” health-care proposals, Mr. Biden responded, “The party is me. Right now, I am the Democratic Party,” adding, “The platform of the Democratic Party is what I, in fact, approved of.” At another point, when Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Biden “agreed with Bernie Sanders, who is far left,” Mr. Biden batted the remark aside like a bug: “The fact of the matter is: I beat Bernie Sanders.” The president tried to seize on the moment, insisting, “You just lost the left.” Mr. Sanders was having none of it on Wednesday. “What Joe Biden said was right. He does not agree with me,” he said on “The View.” “I wish he did, but he does not.” The senator added, “It is terribly important that we defeat Trump, that we elect Biden and that we have the largest voter turnout in the history of the country.” |