We cats will be traveling, so it may be difficult for us to watch and immediately comment on tomorrow's Presidential debate that, so far, still seems to be happening. However, for those cable news pundits and blatherers who are busy telling President Biden what he "has" to do, we have this advice: Why not give institutional memory a try? You might learn a few things.
Like the fact that one of the advantages of Joe Biden's age is that he's been around so long that there's very little he hasn't seen or doesn't know. And when it comes to debating, he's deftly handled two of the most difficult encounters in modern political history — against Sarah Palin in 2008, and against Benedict Donald in 2020.
The Vice Presidential debate in 2008 was beyond tricky, because although everyone knew by then that Palin was a dolt, then-Senator Biden still had to show her respect — which he did. In polls afterward, viewers said they thought Biden won the debate, 51 to 36 percent. Palin's weird winking at the camera may have had some influence on those numbers. Ah, memories.
Twelve years later, Biden was up against the ever-erratic Benedict Donald, who had been knocked askew by months of his COVID-19 mismanagement and Black Lives Matter. So he wasn't on top of his game, such as it was. But he was still an unpredictable chaos agent — and the incumbent President. So again, a tricky situation. Unlike Trump's 2016 Republican rivals, who had been completely flummoxed by how to handle him, Biden struck the perfect balance between respecting the Presidency and telling his constantly interrupting opponent to shut up. In polls afterward, majorities of viewers handed him the wins.
Please note, by the way, that we're not counting Biden's delicious smackdown of Paul Ryan in 2012. The callow Ryan was too big of a soft and squishy target for Joe to fail. But it's worth remembering that that debate came on the heels of a terrible performance by President Obama against Willard Mitt Romney. Pundits claim that incumbents rarely do well in first debates because Presidenting is a full-time job — there's no time to strategize and prepare. Maybe. But in 2012, it was an incumbent Vice President who rode to his boss's rescue. And now that same guy has been at Camp David, being the leader of the Free World, and prepping, for days. He knows what to do. We cats wish him well, and we PURR.
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