Tuesday’s presidential debate is a gamble for Trump and a critical debut for Harris

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As former president Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris prepare to face each other in Tuesday’s presidential debate at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, the questions surrounding the confrontation are contributing to both the suspense and the stakes.

Will they shake hands in a faux display of congeniality? Will Mr. Trump hold back passively (as he did against Joe Biden in June) or hold forth aggressively (as he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016)? Will Ms. Harris project mastery in her premiere appearance in the high-pressure forum of a general-election debate? Will Mr. Trump, a veteran of debates in three election cycles, succeed in reversing the Harris momentum? Will Ms. Harris continue her upswing in the polls and put distance between her and the former president?

Will any of it matter?

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe and maybe. And perhaps not.

Regardless, this is an important moment for both candidates.

The June debate between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden represented a gamble for the President; he clearly hoped to persuade voters that he remained cognitively dexterous and administratively competent.

However, this showdown represents a gamble for Mr. Trump, who appears to hope a forceful, persuasive performance will arrest the rise of Ms. Harris and return him to the glide path to the presidency he was riding only a month ago. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Sunday, putting the two in a virtual tie, gave indications that the ascent of Ms. Harris has begun to stall.

The goals for both candidates are clear. Mr. Trump needs to appear strong, the profile that propelled him to the presidency in 2016 and has sustained him through four years in the political wilderness. Ms. Harris still must introduce herself to the voters – 28 per cent of whom in the Times/Siena poll said they needed to learn more about her – even as she must show command and confidence.

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Ms. Harris almost certainly will attempt to goad her opponent into quick reactions to prove he’s not presidential, though Mr. Trump’s four years as president redefined the term “presidential.”

“Trump was a different kind of president,” said Roger Porter, who served four Republican presidents in the White House and now teaches the American presidency course at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “He’s so unusual a character that when he moves off the scene, no one will be looking to him or his style as a model.”

He’s also a different kind of debater. His early performances in the 2016 primaries marked him more as an entertainer and comedian than a serious political figure – a perception he overcame by the time he debated Ms. Clinton, when he appeared forceful and intimidating. Four years later, his interruptions and imprecations prompted Mr. Biden to say, “Will you shut up, man?”

This time, Mr. Trump is likely to press his attack on the Biden administration, implicating the Vice-President in the vulnerabilities of the Biden record. That’s an angle Mr. Trump is likely to undertake, buttressed by the Times/Siena poll, which shows that 55 per cent of voters believe Ms. Harris represents “more of the same.”

This debate is occurring in an unusual moment in contemporary American politics. For nine years, Mr. Trump has been the focus of the country’s political conversation, holding its attention as if by Velcro. That seemed to intensify after he was the target of an assassination attempt and was renominated in an emotional convention in Milwaukee.

But since Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from the race, it has been Ms. Harris who has dominated media coverage. For that reason, the vast majority of Trump advertisements have been on her vulnerabilities – charges about her lack of experience, her pattern of changing views – rather than on Mr. Trump’s virtues. For the first time, Mr. Trump is sharing centre stage in the American political drama.

Ms. Harris has both strengths and weaknesses going into this session. Only 11 per cent of voters think she had a great deal of influence on economic policy within the Biden administration, and 15 per cent said the same of immigration, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken last month. That could inoculate Ms. Harris, whose performance on immigration issues has been a special target of Mr. Trump.

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But it also could support the notion that she has been ineffective. One way or another, Ms. Harris will likely be forced to handle on the debate stage a barrage of the very criticisms that Mr. Trump had prepared to address to Mr. Biden.

This also will be one of the few times that Mr. Trump will be speaking to an audience not entirely made up of his own supporters. So even phrases and rhetorical elements that people following the campaign have grown accustomed to hearing (particularly his jabs about Ms. Harris’s race and her Indian name, which he deliberately mispronounces) will be reaching new ears.

The June debate laid bare the vulnerabilities of Mr. Biden, shocked Democrats out of their allegiance to the President, and prompted the birth of the Harris campaign. How much this debate will matter is itself a subject of debate among political professionals.

“Debates in the general election can move some people in small bumps,” said Karyn Amira, an expert on the relationship between candidate perception and voting behaviour who teaches at South Carolina’s College of Charleston. “But for undecided voters who need to learn about a candidate for the first time, there could be room for movement. Overall, this singular event won’t make the average voter decide.”

Unless one of the candidates turns in a particularly bad performance or a particularly good performance.

“If something remarkable happens in this debate, it could go viral,” said Jonathan Kaufman, director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism. “That’s rare, but it’s the kind of thing that can affect the outcome of an election.”