By any official measure, the debate between Biden and lasted a little more than 90 minutes. So why do I feel like I aged five years watching it? Possibly because seemed to age that much as well. Prior to the event, the conventional wisdom was that President Biden had to project enough vigor and forcefulness to counter the arguments that he’s too old to serve another four years.
The other generally agreed-upon idea was that Trump had to show restraint and not behave in his typical unhinged fashion. Well, one of them succeeded. And much to the dismay of Democrats who probably tore out much of their hair during the evening, it wasn’t Biden.
The president has been locked away at Camp David engaging in strenuous preparations for the last week, but you wouldn’t know it from his rambling, unfocused performance. From the very beginning, he spoke too quickly, failing to form coherent sentences and frequently losing his train of thought. And why, oh why, did no one think of giving him a lozenge? He didn’t just have a frog in his throat — he had the entire amphibian kingdom.
Trump, on the other hand, seemed calm, cool and collected, staring straight ahead during Biden’s answers and somehow stifling his normal gleeful impulse for chaos. His advisers must have wired him to a machine guaranteed to induce electric shocks if he spoke out of turn. It didn’t matter that virtually everything that came out of his mouth was a lie.
If you watched with the sound off, he looked compose.
