Managing Debate Expectations: I Hear that When Biden Talks, His False Teeth Fly Out of His Mouth and Go Chattering Across the Room

And other rumors

Photo from Kevin Dietsch via Getty.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that debates don’t matter much. Sure, they matter a little — it probably didn’t help Gerald Ford in 1976 when he forgot that the Cold War was a thing — but they typically don’t move the needle. Debates seem like high school romances: They’re stressful and feel very important when they’re happening, but in the end, they usually don’t end up mattering much at all.

I think this time is different; I think that this debate will matter. Both guys are old, and this will be the first time in four years that many people have seen them for an extended stretch. People will be watching to see how many steps each guy has lost. I think that Trump has an advantage because he’s always been a rambling lunatic; if he descends into incoherent rants about hair spray and Rosie O’Donnell, people will think “He’s the same as he always was.” For Biden, the stakes are sky-high; he has to prove that he’s in better shape than people think. But how do people think he’s doing? Biden has to exceed an expectation that exists in each person’s mind.

Which means that the expectations game is more important than ever. I want Biden to win, and this debate could be a big moment. So, to the extent that I can influence anyone’s expectations, I’d like to try to do that. And I think that I can do that by sharing some rumors that I’ve heard about Biden. For example: I heard that Biden has lost the capacity for speech and can only communicate through grunts now. Yep: just grunts and blinks, like the Diving Bell and the Butterfly guy — that’s what I heard! Of course, if Biden uses any intelligible words whatsoever at the debate, then the only conclusion we can draw is that he’s actually fine and we should all vote for him.

I hear that Biden’s ancient bones have turned to sand, and that he moves around like a big, wobbly slug. I heard that staffers have to cram his amorphous, gelatinous body into his suit every morning, and sometimes they’ll shove his face through a pant leg and have to start all over. I hear that Kamala Harris once sat on the president thinking he was a beanbag chair, and that Lloyd Austin once crammed him into a wine fridge on a dare. If it turns out that Biden has anything resembling a human skeletal structure, then the next day’s headlines should read “Virile Biden Conquers Trump”.

I hear that the only thing Biden can remember is a Howdy Doody episode from 1956. Biden calls everyone around him Buffalo Bob, and he ends every staff meeting by saying “And now let’s watch a cartoon — hooray!” He spent an entire two-hour meeting with Netanyahu singing “It’s Howdy Doody Time” over and over, and he spent the whole G7 summit asking about the whereabouts of Tommy Turtle. If Biden discusses any non-Howdy Doody topics Thursday night, then that clearly means that his brain is totally fixed and that everything is fine now.

I hear that Biden only wears tracksuits and white New Balance sneakers, and that he spends all day sitting on a couch covered by an afghan. He cranks up the heat in the White House and watches Matlock at an ear-splitting volume, and when one Matlock episode ends, he makes a screeching noise until someone puts on the next episode. Biden only eats applesauce and Tootsie Rolls, and whenever a child gets near, he flips them a shiny penny and says “Go buy yourself some ribbon candy!” If, at the debate, Biden wears a suit and doesn’t screech even though there’s no Matlock — and CNN has confirmed that no Matlock will be shown on the monitors near the stage — then I guess he’s fine and all concerns about his age were overblown.

I hear that Biden is scared of all technology. I hear that just to get him to go to the debate, his staff had to convince him that the TV cameras are actually just big boxes of Professor McSweeny’s Extra Dry Soda Crackers. They told him that the lights are powered by kerosene and that the microphone is a licorice whip, and they got Jake Tapper to agree to refer to TikTok as “those new Penny Dreadful novels that the kids read.” If someone’s phone should go off during the debate, the Secret Service have been instructed to cover Biden with a weighted blanket and sing Edelweiss to him until he calms down. Of course, if none of that happens, then we can only conclude that Biden is the hip, with-it candidate who will capture the youth vote this fall because they all think that he’s the cat’s pajamas.

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In what kind of shape is Biden, really? That truly is for each of us to decide. I recently watched him do interviews with Conan O’Brien and Howard Stern, and my perception is that he’s clearly diminished but also clearly still there. It’s not a Strom Thurmond situation where his staffers are doing 4/5 of a Weekend at Bernie’s. Biden speaks slowly and often slurs his words, but he’s coherent. My Biden vote remains an easy decision because 80 percent of a functioning brain clearly beats any percentage of a non-functioning brain, but other people have different perceptions. When people see Biden on Thursday night, will they think “he’s better than I thought” or “he’s worse than I thought”? I’m not sure; that all really depends on their expectations.

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