Are you ready ? This Thursday evening we will perhaps witness the “most important 90 minutes” of the “election season” in the United States.
Posted at 1:23 a.m.
Updated at 7:00 a.m.
It was George W. Bush’s former strategist, Karl Rove, who recently described the first of two debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden this way.
“This election may remain close until the end, but if anything can put a candidate firmly in the lead,” it is this debate, said the expert.
It’s not impossible.
But which of the two politicians would be best placed to benefit from the debate? And how ?
I joined Professor Bernard Motulsky at the department of social and public communication at UQAM to discuss it. We both agreed to watch, beforehand, the debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020.
I wrote at the time, about the first debate, that “never has a duel between an American president and his rival resembled a mud wrestling match so much.”
Four years later, it remains obvious.
But it is also clear that, of the two candidates, it was Joe Biden who looked the most presidential, by far – even if he sometimes responded brutally to Donald Trump’s attacks, going so far as to call him a clown.
Bernard Motulsky makes the same observation. “We have on the one hand someone who gesticulates, who is angry, who is sanguine, even in the color of his skin,” he said of Donald Trump’s performance in 2020.
“And on the other hand, we have someone who is almost a wax statue, who doesn’t go in all directions, so he has a more presidential look. And when he presents a file, he masters it,” adds the expert.
At the time, polls taken after each of the debates gave Joe Biden the winner.
“What struck me was that he often replied: here’s what to do, one, two, three. He came out with three or four items. He is an experienced parliamentarian, so he knows how to debate. He knows that he must not fall into the traps of others who attack him,” points out Bernard Motulsky.
Joe Biden had therefore found a winning formula. Everything suggests that he will try to use the same one this year.
“His challenge is to keep his ideas clear, structured, articulated.”
Let me add: he managed to prove, during the two confrontations with Donald Trump in 2020, that he was still quick-witted and dynamic.
He must at all costs be just as fiery and dashing this Thursday. Like during his State of the Union speech last March.
Donald Trump’s strategists, for their part, must instead try to convince their candidate not to repeat his 2020 performances. Particularly that of the first debate, where he constantly interrupted Joe Biden to such an extent that the host, Chris Wallace , had to scold him more than once. It was embarrassing.
Bernard Motulsky believes that Donald Trump will be able to “score points if he behaves less aggressively, if he listens and if he gives answers, but answers which are not only attacks”. And if he avoids making statements like: “Since Abraham Lincoln, there is no other president who has done as much as I have for black people in the United States. »
Let us not lose sight of the fact that the context this year is completely different. In my opinion, he will make Donald Trump’s job easier.
In 2020, he was in the White House and he had a record to defend. Not only had he managed the country in a chaotic manner upon taking office, but COVID-19 was still wreaking havoc in the United States. He was extremely vulnerable.
Joe Biden took advantage of it.
During the first debate, he stressed that Donald Trump would be the first president “to have fewer jobs at the end than at the beginning of his mandate”.
In the second debate, when he was attacked over corruption allegations against his son, Hunter Biden, the Democratic candidate turned to the camera to speak to Americans in the eye.
“This is not about my family or his family, this is about your family and they are suffering a lot. If you are a middle-class family, you are suffering a lot right now,” he said.
However, this year, he is the one in power. It is his record which will be examined and criticized during the debates.
In the opinion of several observers, this record is relatively good. But the president has a hard time defending it, above all because of the effect of inflation on Americans’ wallets.
“The roles have changed,” notes Bernard Motulsky.
They have reversed themselves… but not completely. Because Donald Trump has already spent four years in the White House and Americans, in some cases, are still paying the price. The fate reserved for the right to abortion is one of the most eloquent examples and Joe Biden will certainly emphasize it insistently.
Not to mention that the Republican candidate is now the first ex-president to have been convicted of a criminal act.
In short, the number of explosive subjects on the menu as well as the very nature of the two candidates are indeed likely to transform one or the other of the presidential debates into a significant event. Anyone who cares about the fate of our powerful neighbors would do well to care.
The first of two presidential debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will take place on Thursday, June 27 at 9 p.m.; it will take place in Atlanta, in the studios of the CNN network.
Watch the first debate of 2020
Watch the second debate of 2020
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