During an interview with Howard Stern on April 26, President Joe Biden said he would be “happy” to debate Donald Trump. Biden and his campaign should rethink and rescind this offer, or else they should attach a nonnegotiable condition on their participation in any debate with Trump.
Hold that thought. First, let’s acknowledge that Biden would be at a significant disadvantage in a debate with Trump. Modern political debates are about performance, not issues. No one wins a debate by articulating an organized, carefully conceived position, something nearly impossible to do during the two-minute segments and the 30-second rebuttals of the modern format.
In fact, the actual content of the candidates’ discourse hardly matters. The goals are the perfect sound bite, the stinging zinger and a gaffe-free performance. The worst shortcoming is to fail to get a word in edgewise. Moderators are nearly powerless to manage the verbal free-for-all.
In a modern debate, Trump will always have the homefield advantage; the ground rules suit him. Interrupting comes naturally to him. He blusters and struts. He’s a rhetorical bully; his discourse relies on bombastic assertion, generally unencumbered by facts, logic or deliberation.
We have to be honest about Biden, as well. Eloquence has never been his strong suit, and he’s always been prone to gaffes, misstatements and exaggerations.