President Joe Biden still has a simple and telegenic smile. And, for a flickering moment in his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos — aired as a 30-minute special Friday night after having been taped earlier that day — that covered for quite a bit.
The commander-in-chief is within the midst of an unremittingly brutal press cycle following his performance within the June 27 CNN debate against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. That TV appearance was a possibility he never must have taken. The format did him no favors in the primary place, and Biden’s mien made clear that even the moderators fact-checking in real time (as CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash didn’t do) wouldn’t have saved him. This second press appearance, a 22-minute interview that ABC aired without edits or interruption, was less a possibility to clear the air than a mandatory appointment — and a deferred one, at that, coming eight days after his soft-spoken, diffident, and confusing responses to an eminently fact-checkable Trump, dissembling and outright lying and not using a proper response, plunged his campaign into chaos.
In order Stephanopoulos opened by bringing up the talk — as in fact he would — Biden broke into that classic, practiced politician’s smile, a warm sign that he understood there have been issues to unpack. Then, as Stephanopoulos quoted Nancy Pelosi as saying Biden had a “bad night,” Biden spoke, saying “Sure did” in a voice nearly as raspy and hard to make out because the one from the talk — again, eight nights prior.
Inside 30 seconds, Stephanopoulos was asking a follow-up query: Biden said he was exhausted, and while Stephanopoulos allowed that the President had undergone a month of busy travel, he’d been back on east coast time for several days before the talk. Listening to this set of facts, Biden allowed his face to enter an expression familiar from the talk he was attempting to erase from public memory. His eyes, on camera, looked right into a distance unfamiliar; his mouth hung slackly open.
Anyone who has been lucky enough to have relatives live into old age recognizes this expression, and recalls it with no small amount of pain, too.
Biden snapped back in to answer Stephanopoulos that he had undergone medical tests for “some infection — a virus” after his debate, but that he had just suffered “a extremely bad cold.” Asked if he watched the talk back, Biden said “I don’t think I did, no.” The qualifier said all of it: He didn’t, in saying that he hadn’t watched it since experiencing it, seem certain.
And the President seemed in moments combative, telling Stephanopoulos that “you’ve had some bad interviews” matching Biden’s own “bad night.” If this was intended as a joke, it didn’t land. And he, given a quiet space (an interview in what seemed to be a college library in Madison, Wisc., where Biden had been campaigning, versus a debate stage on which he was being bayed at by Trump), was capable of list off a few of his accomplishments and a few goals for his second term. Unfortunately, this was throughout the context of harm control. And it was carried across with the identical unsteady tone that’s newly familiar to viewers. When, describing the stresses he’s under, Biden said, “Not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world,” viewers’ hearts can have stopped for a moment; Biden went on to make clear his statement, but a certain facility with words is solely gone.
Elsewhere, Biden appeared to live in a bubble. And it was inside this bubble that he spoke most plainly, most clearly. He simply refused to acknowledge his position within the polls, saying that his internal polls showed different results. He refused to contemplate the concept other party leaders would ask him to go away the ticket. And he said that, if he lost the election, he would feel sanguine: “So long as I gave it my all, and did one of the best job I do know I can do — that’s what that is about.” For the donors who’re refusing to provide to the party until Biden leaves the ticket, this race is about greater than whether Biden meets a private benchmark.
Biden took eight days of preparation to provide ABC News 22 minutes of screen time. It wasn’t enough. How way more preparation would have been? Or how much shorter should they’ve whittled down the interview? A part of the job of a celebration’s nominee, and of a President, is to recommend the case in all types of settings, to succeed in all types of individuals, each voters and stakeholders from lawmakers to other world leaders. Biden’s debate performance has definitely traveled widely, and he deserved the possibility to clear the air. But, in giving him 22 minutes by which he spoke in an occluded and infrequently resentful and sarcastic manner, it seemed apparent that Biden is unwilling, and — crucially — unable to make a case for himself.
Seen through the prism of television, Biden is unfortunately not merely losing the war against his opponent, but in a seemingly unwinnable position. He waited eight days to provide a scant period of time to a comparatively sympathetic interviewer — and this was the result. It could not be an unreasonable expectation that the campaign-saving interview might need run, say, an hour. But when this was what resulted from a half-hour, what else might need been unearthed had the clock been allowed to run on? Or if the interview had happened closer to the talk?
Elections have been won and lost on television for the reason that Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960. And it might not be a good expectation that a President have the opportunity to make the case on TV — however it is the expectation. And it’s one which Biden seems not to understand that, irrespective of how much rest he gets or how rigidly his campaign controls the timeline, he cannot meet.
