Name: Former Debate Coach Explains Biden’s and Trump’s Debate Strategy | WSJ
Uploaded: 2024-06-28T02:50:05.000Z
Duration: 6 min 52 s
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Adverbs of degree

Instead of Biden, Vice President Biden, Vice President Biden, President Joe Biden has been in more debates on the presidential level than just about any other politician, nearly 30 of them.

And he's getting ready to take the stage again, this time for a rematch against former President Donald Trump.

Stand back and stand by. Both Biden and Trump are experienced debaters on the presidential level.

They've both had some stumbles in the last few months and weeks and are both looking to this opportunity to reset the narratives a bit on the campaign.

Here's how the two presumed presidential nominees have evolved on the debate stage and what's at stake this time. So as we debate these issues, let's put them in concrete terms and understand that when we talk about these statistics, we're talking about people.

President Biden, one of the things he does well is he projects well as a decent, honest human being.

And he wants to make sure that people understand that he is an American just like them, out of the working class. Ted Olson, a former U.S.

Solicitor General, stood in as Biden during Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan's debate prep sessions in 2012.

I was looking at every tape I could get my hands on, every video of every debate, every policy statement.

Now he does go back in politics for decades, so there's an awful lot of material there.  Biden's first presidential forum was nearly 40 years ago, alongside his Democratic rivals in Houston.

He'd already been in public office for more than a decade.

And I believe we can meet all these challenges that we've talked about tonight.

And it's not just my 15 years of experience as a United States Senator that tells me that.

It's my unyielding belief that the American people can solve any problem they set their minds to.

He does use certain phrases over and over again.

He has certain quirky mannerisms with respect to his speech.

He has this sort of big smile, this, like, large-watted smile that he would really flash in a disarming way.

He did this particularly well, I thought, during his vice presidential debates. So as he's being attacked, he's not scowling.

He's just flashing this giant smile and chuckling a little bit.

Senator Biden, you would remember that in that energy plan that Obama voted for, that's what gave those oil companies those big tax breaks.

Your running mate voted for that. By 2012, when Biden faced Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate, the Democratic nominee had served in the Senate for nearly 40 years.

Joe Biden wasn't so inhibited because people knew him.

He roved a lot in terms of the subject of the conversation.

And when we look weak, our adversaries are much more willing to test us.

They're more brazen in their attacks, and our allies are less willing to trust us.

With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. His weakness is that he has a difficulty staying on the subject.

He'll answer or direct something to the point of the question that he has asked, but then he will drift off into something that's tangential to that, and that distracts from the image that he's going to want to project of someone that's mature, sensible, and in full control of his faculties. Joe Biden comes with half a century of experience in national politics.

But interestingly enough, it is Donald Trump who has had more times on the presidential debate stage than Joe Biden.

Trump has participated in at least 15 debates for the presidency since his first White House bid in 2016.

It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

Secretary Clinton. Former President Trump does not have a natural inclination to be calm or temperate.

There's nothing smart about you, Joe. 47 years, you've done nothing. President Trump, he casts himself frequently as the outsider.

Trump is able to get under his opponent's skin when he's on the debate stage and rattle them and make them say things or do things or appear to be weak in some way.

And he's been able to use that to great effect, particularly in 2016.

Don't worry about it a little, Marco. I think you saw in the 2020 debates that Biden was prepared for some of Trump's antics.

Make sure you, in fact, let people know you're a senator.

I'm not gonna answer the question because the question is.

Gentlemen, I think we've ended this one. But the first presidential debate in 2024 will look a little different.

There won't be a live audience, and microphones will be muted when it isn't the candidate's turn to speak.

Having these guardrails, they might actually end up benefiting Trump, who's sort of been known to be a big interrupter, because it will prevent him from being seen as somebody who is just, you know, so overbearing.

This is a 90-minute debate, which is a long period of time.

I know that you can get tired readily, and the concentration is difficult for that period of time. The stakes for this exchange are very high.

There's just not a lot of opportunity to clean up a messy performance.

It makes it all the more important that this one is perfect.

Trump and Biden are tied among registered voters nationally, according to recent polls.

And they're both facing heightened scrutiny.

Trump recently became the first former U.S. president ever convicted of felony crimes, and Biden's age and mental acuity have been a major concern for many voters. You have to be very careful when you're in a debater.

You don't want to reinforce the negative things that people already think about you.

 If the candidate behaves consistent with kind of low expectations that are set for either one of them, that's going to reinforce those expectations, and then it's going to be impossible to dispel that over the remainder of the campaign.