Horowitz: Biden Debate Performance - Yellow Caution Flag
Tuesday, July 02, 2019
Joe Biden
The question that lingers from Biden’s subpar performance: was he just rusty or have his previously strong debating skills markedly diminished?
As some observers noted, including former NJ Governor Chris Christie on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos, there are a number of examples of recent presidents, who tend to be insulated from the thrust and parry of public combat with political opponents in ways similar to Biden, doing poorly in the first debate of their re-election campaigns. This includes Obama in 2012, Bush in 2004 and Reagan in 1984--all who badly lost their first debate-and then came back to perform strongly in the remaining debates. Given that Biden’s last debate was nearly 7 years ago against Paul Ryan and that since January, 2017 he has been out of public office, these historical precedents are apt.
On the other hand, one cannot yet rule out the possibility, that at 76 years old, the former vice-president has simply lost something off his fastball. Biden’s flustered, defensive and inadequate response to Senator Kamala Harris’s attack on his recent comments on working with segregationists and his opposition to forced busing for racial integration was particularly worrisome because it was completely foreseeable and given the high quality of the former vice-president’s debate preparation team, surely covered in practice sessions. The former vice-president could have easily parried the attack by responding that he is and always has been a strong supporter of civil rights, but believed that federally mandated busing was an ineffective way to accomplish the mission, and then pivoted to his current policy positions. Even most civil rights advocates--at least the ones with a sense of history-will acknowledge that court-ordered busing was at best a mixed blessing, triggering massive white flight to the suburbs and to private schools, which dramatically reduced its utility as a tool of integration.
Perhaps just as problematic, Biden’s responses to the rest of the questions were decidedly not crisp. His answers were meandering and he too often seemed to lose the thread of his argument.
The next Democratic presidential primary candidates’ debates moderated by CNN at the end of July have now taken on critical importance for Joe Biden. If he has another poor outing, the doubts about his candidacy will harden and his front-runner status will be in serious jeopardy. But if he dramatically improves, demonstrating that rust was the main factor in last week’s subpar performance, this column and others like it will justly look like “much ado about nothing.”
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