Biden-Trump debates are a gamble for both candidates

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Finally, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree on something.

That something – a set of debates between the two American major-party candidates – provides risks and opportunities for both. And the way the two camps conduct them may actually produce two evenings of value, rather than two episodes of Survivor.

The last time the two candidates tangled on the same stage was in 2020. Mr. Trump was the incumbent, Mr. Biden the challenger, and the event had more in common with a WWE wrestling match than a seminar at the Council of Foreign Relations. Now the candidates’ roles are the other way around, but the enmity remains the same, perhaps even greater.

The plan – one session next month, the other in September – is as much a break from custom as the debates between vice-president Richard Nixon and senator John F. Kennedy were in 1960. The United States had witnessed important campaign debates before then, but not for the White House. (The sparring between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 were for the Illinois seat in the Senate, not the presidency.)

While debates have since become common – there was an interregnum between 1960 and 1976 – the impending Biden-Trump matchups break precedent for their timing, with the first slated to happen on June 27, nearly five months before the actual election. Moreover, it will take place when neither man will technically have been nominated; the formal nominations will be conferred at the party conventions in the middle of the summer.

This arrangement, settled after quiet back-channel discussions, would circumvent the Commission on Presidential Debates, which had scheduled three sessions before large audiences at college campuses. It also would exclude independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom both campaigns regard as a threat to their success. Mr. Kennedy reacted to the development by saying the two camps were guilty of “colluding” against him to “avoid discussion of their eight years of mutual failure.”

The 2024 debates will be a return to the form of the 1960 debates, which took place in a television studio, without a Greek chorus of supporters applauding or expressing auditory disdain. In recent years, presidential debates have had the atmosphere of playoff hockey, though without the flinging of an octopus or a catfish. The Nixon-Kennedy sessions had an academic feeling, with thoughtful exchanges on foreign policy and economics that had the air of a discussion in the faculty lounge.

Regardless of the format, however, this new round of debates is a gamble for both candidates.

Mr. Biden, facing critiques that he is too old – and, in the characterization of his critics, too mentally infirm to be president – could not plausibly have rejected Mr. Trump’s challenge to debate; that would feed into his opponents’ narrative. But he clearly is less nimble verbally than his rival and, since he entered the Senate in 1973, has been known for gaffes, run-on sentences and stream-of consciousness narratives that often have no discernible logical destination.

For his part, Mr. Trump embarks on rhetorical flights of his own that could be a disadvantage if the moderator has the right to cut off his microphone at the end of the specified time period. In both his primary and general-election debate appearances in 2016, Mr. Trump often interrupted his opponents. Under the tentative format of these debates, his mic could be disabled while Mr. Biden speaks.

At the same time, there are enormous potential advantages for the two presumptive nominees.

Mr. Biden delivered a convincing (and, to his supporters, assuring) performance at his State of the Union address this winter, with ad libs that showed him at the top of his game. His team boasted that Americans saw the President’s policy fluency and his mental acuity during one of the set-piece speeches of the country’s political life. These debates would allow him to display his mastery to an even bigger audience at an event with even bigger stakes.

The stakes are just as great for Mr. Trump, not known for the accuracy of the remarks he makes or for his stage discipline. But if the former president displays competence along with his trademark confidence, and if his performance is modulated and free of grievance, he could convince undecided voters that he has the capacity to act in a manner often described as “presidential.” He also could persuade onetime supporters who have grown skeptical of him – whether for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, his intemperate rally comportment or his behaviour with women – that he deserves a second chance and a second term.

American presidential debates have shaped the outcome of elections. In 1960, Mr. Kennedy’s smooth performance in the first debate – combined with the stage perspiration of Mr. Nixon – convinced many voters that the 43-year-old war hero was suited for the Oval Office. In 1976, former governor Jimmy Carter deftly parried the attacks of president Gerald Ford, who erred when he suggested that Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union.

The age issue – critical for Mr. Biden, who is 81, but also for Mr. Trump, at 77 – has played a role in them before, too. In 1984, president Ronald Reagan, at 73 the oldest president to that time, delivered a shaky performance in the first session with former vice-president Walter Mondale.

But Mr. Reagan recovered at the next session, saying of his opponent, who was 56, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” On the Mondale plane after the debate, it was clear that the Minnesotan knew that he had been defeated, in the debate and in the general election itself.