Here's a terrifying thought I couldn't get out of my head as I watched Thursday's debate: President Biden looked like a corpse.
Sure, anyone might look pale next to the flowery orange former President Trump, but Biden's pallor was alarming.
When he wasn't speaking, Biden's eyes had a faraway look and, more worryingly, his mouth was slack. Compared to the over-animated Trump—who scowled, grimaced, and pursed his mouth—Biden's face looked as if it had been dipped in Botox and frozen.
And his voice! What has become of our President's loquacious voice? It was so whispery and phlegmy that I felt like shouting: “Clear your throat, for God's sake!”
Biden's performance on Thursday was revealing, for all the wrong reasons.
For years, Republicans have tried to make us believe that Biden is weak. They have deceptively edited videos to make him look like a fool, magnified his every little mistake, and exploited his lifelong stutter, which old age seems to have exacerbated.
On Thursday, tragically, he did the job for them.
Trump was, of course, Trump: he spewed out a volcano of lies, misstatements, exaggerations and scaremongering. It seemed like virtually nothing that came out of his mouth was true, especially his insistence that the United States under the Biden administration has become the laughing stock of the world, that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine under his command, and that Hamas would never have attacked to Israel.
I recorded the debate and didn't watch it until it was over. I refused to look at my phone, which was ringing like crazy, because I didn't want to be swayed by anyone's opinion of what had happened. I wanted my impressions to be mine alone, free of any conventional wisdom that was rapidly congealing in the cybersphere. And on Friday morning I tried not to look at the headlines, even though it was obvious that Biden had had a terrible, terrible night.
I ran a thought experiment: If I read the transcript, would I be as alarmed by Biden’s performance as I was when I saw it on television? Would his sepulchral presentation be obvious? Would he seem like a man in command of facts and history? Would it make sense, to put it bluntly?
The answer is a resounding but bittersweet yes, because its substance will ultimately be less important than its geriatric behavior.
Take the abortion debate, which will be a key issue in November, as it has been in every election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
Biden says: “The idea that politicians, that the founders wanted politicians to be the ones making decisions about women’s health, is ridiculous. That’s the bottom line: No politician should be making that decision. A doctor should be making those decisions. That’s how it should be done. That’s what we’re going to do. And if I’m elected, I’m going to reinstate Roe v. Wade.”
Trump responded with his crazy speech: “That means he can take the baby’s life in the ninth month and even after birth, because some states, governed by Democrats, take it after birth. Again, the governor (former governor of Virginia): ‘Leave the baby and then we will decide what to do with it. ’ So he is in, he is willing, as we say, to rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month and kill it. Nobody wants that to happen.”
(For years, Trump has misrepresented a 2019 statement by then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat and pediatric neurologist, about what happens when a nonviable fetus with severe deformities is born.)
Trump's statements are often ridiculous to the point of meaninglessness, but he speaks with the conviction of a pathological liar. During a discussion about immigration, for example, he spoke forcefully, but I have no idea what he was talking about:
“He decided to open our border, open our country to people who are in prisons, people who are in mental institutions, asylums, terrorists,” Trump said. “We have the highest number of terrorists entering our country right now. …We had the most secure border in history. In the last few months of my presidency, according to the Border Patrol, we had who's great and, by the way, who endorsed me for president. But I won't say that. But they endorsed me for president. “Brandon, just talk to him.”
Apology?
“I’m not saying that no terrorists have made it across,” Biden said of the border. “But the idea that they’re emptying their prisons and we’re welcoming these people, that’s just not true. There’s no data to support what he said. Once again, he’s exaggerating. He’s lying.”
Tell me again who is confused?
On the economy, the No. 1 issue for most voters, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Biden: “What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?”
“We have to look at what I was left with when I took office, what Mr. Trump left me with,” Biden responded. “We had an economy that was in free fall. The pandemic was very poorly handled. A lot of people were dying. All he said was, ‘It’s not that bad, just inject some bleach into your arm. You’ll be fine.’ The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15%. It was terrible.”
“And then what we had to do was try to put things back together… We created 15,000 new jobs. We achieved that today we have 800,000 new jobs in the manufacturing sector.” (Biden meant a total of 15 million new jobs, something his campaign often boasts about.)
Trump's response to the question was, again, lies and nonsense:
“We had the best economy in the history of our country,” he boasted, wrongly. “We have never done so well. Everyone was amazed by it. Other countries copied us. COVID hit us. And when we did, we spent the money necessary to not end up in a Great Depression, like the one we had in 1929. When we finished, we did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and there were no wars and a lot of other things. Everything was going well”.
Yes, Thursday’s debate was painful to watch. Biden, who has maintained that his age, 81, is irrelevant, can no longer make that claim. His decline is worrying.
And yet, whether he drops out of the race or not, the choice facing voters in November is stark: Do we want democracy or do we want dictatorship? The answer should be obvious.
