Many Democratic strategists and organizers viewed 2024's first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump as Biden's golden opportunity to mortally wound his opponent's campaign. From abortion to health care to Trump's legal problems, they argued, Biden had a chance to show voters how disastrous a second Trump presidency would be.
But after the Thursday night, June 27 debate, countless Trump critics — lamenting how weak and hoarse Biden sounded — slammed Biden's debate performance as terrible. Some are wondering if he capable of defeating Trump in November.
Never Trump conservative and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, in an article published by The Atlantic on June 28, laments that Biden "delivered a fiasco of a performance on the Atlanta debate stage." But Frum's piece isn't strictly a critique of Biden.
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The conservative's broader point is that the debate's premise was a travesty because Trump is not a normal or conventional GOP candidate.
"Everything about the event was designed to blur the choice before Americans," Frum argues. "Both candidates — the serving president and the convicted felon — were addressed as 'president.' The questions treated an attempted coup d’état as one issue out of many. The candidates were left to police or fail to police the truth of each other's statements; it was nobody else's business but the two men at the podiums."
Frum notes that the "presidential debate format" has traditionally come down to "Do I prefer the candidate in the red tie or the blue one?" for viewers — only in the 2024 election, the stakes are much greater.
"Against the threat of Trump," Frum warns, "Americans must save themselves. The job of doing so cannot be delegated to some charismatic savior — and anyway, that charismatic savior has yet to present himself or herself. Television always wants to reduce active human beings to passive viewers…. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved."
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Frum adds, "Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it was. Not his. Yours."
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David Frum's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).
