by Ann Marie Bahr

What happened on Thursday evening, June 27, was billed as a presidential debate. It had the appearance of a debate. Biden and Trump came with a list of accomplishments during their respective times in office, and both claimed the other was a terrible president. Both Trump and Biden appealed to alleged facts, but there was no real time fact check to let the viewer know which of the claims, accusations, and counter accusations were accurate and which were not. Viewers need that information to help them make a wise judgment about how to vote in November. And isn’t that why we have presidential debates—to inform us so that we can vote intelligently? If so, this debate and the conversations it engendered failed to fulfill their purpose.  

Photo credit: The New Yorker

Perhaps, given the amount of chatter about Biden’s brain prior to the debate, it shouldn’t have surprised me that the post-debate commentary paid little or no attention to the content of the debate. But it did surprise me. To be honest, it shocked and angered me.  The commentary was fixated on Biden’s verbal mishaps. He misspoke a few times, but always corrected himself when he had time to do so. Even in those instances when his time to speak ran out before he could clarify, it was possible for someone who had been paying attention to know what he meant. These faux pas were held up as indicators of cognitive decline. But political debates are not the forum for establishing presence or absence of cognitive decline—that requires an examination in a medical venue. Debates are about ideas, facts, analysis, accomplishments, policies, and visions of the nation’s future and how we can get there. The post-debate commentary was not about any of those things. 

Also unaddressed were Trump’s rambling non sequiturs. Compared to Biden, the periods in which Trump appeared to be talking nonsense were longer and less amenable to being rendered sensible by context. See, for example, his response to moderator Dana Bash’s question about abortion pills which begins ca.14:00 on the CNN YouTube debate video. See also Trump’s statement about the border which begins at 23:35.  

Fact checks of the debate appeared the following day. They were pretty much ignored.  We are now two weeks past the debate and there is still almost no attention paid to the accuracy of the claims made in the debate. If the reader is interested, fact checks of this debate are available from The Associated Press, Poynter, and PolitiFact. They provide evidence that Biden was mostly accurate. Trump, on the other hand, made numerous false claims. 

In addition to being factually incorrect, some of Trump’s claims were also nonsensical. Take, for example, Trump’s claim that “The problem they have is they’re radical, because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth – after birth!” What is he talking about? It is logically and physically impossible for an abortion to occur after birth. Perhaps Trump was claiming that some doctors were committing infanticide—the killing of an infant. But infanticide is illegal in all 50 states, and that was true before, during and after the period of Roe v. Wade. Where are the voices calling for Trump to step aside because he seems to have problems staying on track and accurately recalling facts?    

In addition to the lack of real time fact checking, attention to the substance of the debate was hampered by Biden’s raspy, soft voice. Sometimes it was challenging to hear what he said. Why did viewers have to strain to hear him for an hour and a half? If I had been there in person, I would have walked over and turned up his mic! Was no one available at CNN to do this simple task? 

It’s not just the pundits who ignored the substance of the debate and opined endlessly about Biden’s health. Most of my circle of friends were also caught up in discussions about age and cognitive decline. One, a gifted logician and journalist, said in an email: “The presidency of the United States is perhaps the most difficult and strenuous job in the world. Biden does not have the strength needed to do the job.”  Hmmm . . .  The U.S. has had at least one very successful president who was unable to stand up or walk. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had very limited movement from the waist down as a result of polio. He almost always used a wheelchair. He was elected to an unprecedented four terms in office (the 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944 elections). He guided the U.S. through both the Great Depression and the Second World War. He was the architect of the New Deal. He died in office while serving his fourth term as President. It would be hard to deny that he was both physically frail, and also an enormously successful and popular President. 

Even prominent members of the Democratic Party joined the single-issue drumbeat. Claire McCaskill, former U.S. Senator from Missouri and current political analyst for NBC and MSNBC, had this to say: “Joe Biden had one thing that he had to do tonight, and he didn’t do it. He had one thing that he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.” 

 I wonder who decided that the debate was solely about whether Biden was “up to the job at his age.” That’s not why most people watch a debate. Most people are trying to decide who they want to be the next president, and the structure and content of a presidential debate is designed to help them do so. This debate failed to deliver because for weeks and months prior to the debate the media was filled with attacks on Biden’s age and health. The attention of viewers was misdirected; what was said about issues and policies came to matter not at all. All attention was directed toward any signs of aging or frailty.  

It was only by a determined, forceful, and repeated direction of people’s attention to the potential impact of age on cognitive ability that anyone could arrive at the point where they watched the debate solely to see whether age was impacting Biden’s performance. And they saw that it was. Which isn’t surprising. No one is as vigorous or quick at 81 as they were at 31.  But are the impacts of age of the kind that might impede the ability to carry out the functions of the President? Or, might the increase in wisdom and experience which accrues to those who age well actually enhance one’s ability to govern wisely and with discretion? That discussion can and should take place, but not at the expense of the public’s opportunity to see and digest the content of a presidential debate focused on issues of policy and governance.  

“The debate” is being called a disaster for Biden. Certainly true—the misdirection of attention is aimed squarely and unjustly at him and not at Trump. But it is even more a disaster for the nation because it sows additional chaos and misinformation in a country already reeling from both.