• Show Notes

This week i thought I would repost my Note from July 23rd, where I made some predictions about the first presidential debate. I didn’t do too badly. I was right that expectations had been (inexplicably) so lowered for Biden that he was well positioned to exceed them. He did. I was wrong that Trump would avoid a catastrophic showing. He didn’t, not because of what he said but because of how he behaved. What do you think?

Illuminating or not, presidential debates have been a part of my political education since I was a teenager. With one exception, I believe I’ve watched every single one since Reagan’s shaky first performance against Walter Mondale, which caused people to wonder about the incumbent’s mental acuity. In the follow-up, when asked whether his age should be an issue, the 73-year-old Reagan famously deflected those concerns with a perfectly-delivered one-liner: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Everyone laughed, and Reagan won in a landslide.

Both contenders this year are older than Reagan was in 1984. The question of mental acuity is back on the table in large part because, oddly, Trump has put it there. He has placed a large bet that his own cognitive ability compares favorably to Joe Biden’s. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Let’s assess the debating strengths of Donald Trump. Some of these strengths are quite formidable, frankly. They don’t, however, have anything to do with eloquence, preparation, intelligence, or rhetorical skill. Rather, as I see it, Trump has two debating assets that inoculate him to some degree against a failed performance.