The 90-minute contest Tuesday in Cleveland, the first presidential debate, will be stripped of typical debate standards.
"Where is Hunter?" Trump asked supporters at a recent rally in Fayetteville, N.C., repeating a phrase that has become a battle cry on his campaign."I think it will be brought up in the debate.""Nobody thought he was going to win, and he didn't think he was going to win," he said.
"Now it's ridiculously personal because he'll be embarrassed if he loses, so he's much more defensive than he was last time." But the president faces a historic challenge as well. Incumbent presidents seeking reelection tend to struggle in their first debate, analysts point out. President Barack Obama faltered in his first debate against challenger Mitt Romney in 2012, as did President George W. Bush against John Kerry in 2004. President George H.W. Bush struggled to gain his footing in his first debate in 1992, squeezed between challengers Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. The examples go back decades: Ronald Reagan doddered his way through a 1984 clash with Walter Mondale; four years before that, Jimmy Carter stumbled through his one and only debate with Reagan. Trump has not had to debate anyone during his presidency, Schroeder pointed out, while Biden sharpened his skills during the Democratic presidential primary race. "Four years as an incumbent means four years in which you've been deferred and people are telling you what you want to hear," said Schroeder, author of"Presidential Debates: Risky Business on the Campaign Trail." "On a debate stage, your opponent is going to do the opposite." The Trump campaign spent majority of the summer excoriating Biden as incoherent and unable to string sentences together without a teleprompter. The campaign has accused the former vice president – who has campaigned largely virtually because of coronavirus concerns – of using the pandemic to get out of traditional campaigning and even the debates. "There's this idea or thesis that Biden is going to slip up or isn't sharp enough to handle the moment, but I think if you look at it historically, he's performed pretty well in most debates," Everhart said, with the exception of the early Democratic primary debates in which a gaffe-prone Biden was dragged for dated cultural references and cutting himself off early.In recent weeks, Trump and his campaign aides have insisted Biden is likely to do well in the first round, given his decades of experience and more recent match-ups during the Democratic primary race. "He's been doing it for 47 years. I've been doing it for 3½ years, so he should be able to beat me. He's much more experienced," Trump told supporters at a rally in Ohio last week. There will be a"small number of ticketed guests" instead of a traditionally packed audience, according to the commission. The lack of crowd may undercut Trump, though it won't make him any less aggressive, said Mercieca, author of"Demagogue For President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump." "Trump, in particular, feeds off of audience reaction," Mercieca said."He's like a child who acts out in class. It works well when he is performing for his classmates, but it doesn't work so well in the principal's office." Robert Barnett, a veteran Washington attorney who has advised Democratic presidential candidates on debate preparation since 1976, argued that Trump and Biden are likely to approach Tuesday very differently, with Trump leaning heavily on his law-and-order message and his attempt to frame Democrats as “socialists.” Biden, on the other hand, will almost certainly focus on the pandemic, the economic turmoil it has caused and Trump’s response to both problems. The coronavirus, he said, is likely to change the landscape of the debate, just as it has for election. “This time what’s going to be more important than the funny line or the personal attack is going to be ‘What’s your life like the next day?’ when you have to remotely school your child, search for a job if you’re unemployed and, God forbid, battle a terrible pandemic,” Barnett said. Aaron Kall, debate coach at the University of Michigan, said he expects a lower-key set of debates, in part because it would be in Biden's best interest. While Trump would likely want a loud contest, he said, Biden would be better off to refuse the bait and draw methodical contrasts on issues like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Supreme Court.The circumstances are also different this election, Kall noted. Trump performed poorly in his first debate in 2016, and felt he had to be more aggressive in the second – especially after the revelation of the"Access Hollywood" tape in which he was heard speaking about groping women. Amid that furor, Trump packed the gallery with women who claimed improper sexual advances by President Bill Clinton and went on the attack against Hillary Clinton during the debate."The problem or challenge in facing off against Joe Biden is you are talking about someone with a far greater degree of goodwill and higher favorability, who in showing empathy has really created an emotional connection with people, and you risk real blowback if you go over the top," he said. An expected surge in early voting and vote-by-mail this year over COVID-19 concerns may raise the stakes for the first match-up. Twenty-nine states begin mailing absentee ballots to voters in September, and an additional nine states open up in-person voting this month."With so many states allowing more than just Election Day voting options, every day becomes a mini Election Day, so the importance of winning along the way each and every day and not just cresting and peaking in that final stretch to Election Day is crucial to winning in a way it hasn’t been in so many states before," Everhart said. Trump, Barnett said, often goes back to what has worked for him in the past – and in the case of debates, his performance in the 2016 primary debates is a familiar balm. “Diminishing, dominating and dissing,” Barnett said. “I think he will revert to that. But I’m not sure that that would be a wise move because I think people are serious right now because they’re facing challenges like none of us have ever faced in our lifetime.” If Trump does bring his campaign trail insults onto the debate stage, Barnett’s advice for Biden is straightforward: “Avoid taking the bait. I think the more the vice president can stay on the substantive issues, the better he’ll do.”
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