How Biden's debate style changed over the years

Jeffrey Goldberg: Zolan, let me ask you about -- I mean, you have -- Jon alluded to this.

You've been watching every Biden debate going back 30 -- Zolan Kanno-Youngs: A lot of footage.

Jeffrey Goldberg: A lot of footage.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: 37 years.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And thank God somebody's there to do it.

We appreciate your efforts.

What's changed over the years and the way Biden does this?

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: I mean, well, again, just to emphasize this to folks, he's been engaged in presidential debates for some 37 years.

We're going back to 1987 for the first time for Joe Biden.

That's nearly four decades ago.

Of course, things have changed.

I mean, he is now 81 years old.

So, looking at the performance of somebody in 1987, how much can that really inform the approach going forward?

But we can find indicators of some things that have changed in his overall approach, or the various styles of Joe Biden.

He can be combative.

And, honestly, when he was combative in 2007 or against Paul Ryan later in 2012 re-election campaign, that was when Democrats actually were pretty high on him.

I talked to David Axelrod recently, who was saying that Joe Biden's moment where he -- during a primary where he went at Rudy Giuliani's, saying he basically knows three words, but one of them is 9/11, paraphrasing there, or when he was facing questions on his discipline, and he gave Brian Williams a one word answer when he asked about, you know, can are you going to be giving gaffes?

Yes.

That caught the attention of future President Obama at that point and of Democrats when he was more folksy, almost avuncular against Paul Ryan and sort of laughed at him, called him my friend, mocked him in the debate.

That also people thought -- Jonathan Karl: Malarkey.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: Yes, malarkey, of course.

People also thought that that was him at a strong point.

But then we get to closer to the present, and 2020 presidential primaries, some Democrats thought that he struggled, particularly even to get a word in, right?

And now that was some time ago.

That was four or five years ago, 2019.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Just in term, pure energy, interventionist energy he wasn't bringing.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: I mean, quite literally trying to like get his time to speak.

I mean, at times he put his finger up to try and get a word in.

There were other times he cut himself off because his own -- when have you ever heard of a politician in debate speaking for not too long, but cutting themselves off?

That's unheard of.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: âSo, all of that, to answer your question, as we got to more recent years, some of the combative nature actually went to almost like a rule-following elder statesman, but there were still signs when he went against Trump in the debates and the combative nature was no longer just having like a zinger line that was prepared but actually goading Trump into delivering a comment that would be viral.

Think about the Proud Boys comment as well, daring him to condemn the Proud Boys.

And that I think is going to be key to watch for this debate.

It's not almost what Joe Biden says but what can Joe Biden go Trump into saying.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to talk about the mechanics of the debate, but I also want you to watch this brief clip from one of those debates where you can see the combative nature of this.

Why don't we watch that?

Joe Biden, U.S. President: Make sure you, in fact, let people know you're a senator.

I'm not going to answer the question because the question is -- would you shut up, man?

Donald Trump: Listen, who is on your list, Joe?

Jeffrey Goldberg: I mean, so, you know, I've been thinking a lot sympathetically about Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, two excellent colleagues of ours in Washington, who have a very, very hard job.

I mean, Jon, you've done this stuff for a while.

What are the biggest challenges facing the moderators in making this a substantive, illuminating debate?

Jonathan Karl: I'm thinking the guy in the control room that has to deal with the muting of the microphones.

Because they have all these rules about the -- you have two minutes to start, a minute rebuttal, and as soon as it's over, the mic is -- but they're going to be going back and forth.

As a moderator, the challenge here is you're a moderator.

You're not an interviewer.

It's not like you're coming in, and I'm here to grill, you know, Joe Biden or Donald Trump on X policy.

You're, you're here to moderate, but you don't want to let lies just fly by.

But as you do your fact-checking, you can't look like you're playing a role in debating the people that are supposed to be debating each other.

And also, remember, it's also perilous.

If you're doing fact-checking in real-time, you better damn well be right.

Remember when Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney in a debate in 2012, actually, the fact check wasn't -- it was murkier?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

But this is an interesting question, Anne, because, I mean, you've written a lot about this particular subject.

When Donald Trump says he won the 2020 election, how far do the moderators go?

How long do they keep pressing back and saying, you actually lost, and before letting it just go to the next set of issues?

Anne Applebaum: I mean, they're going to have to do something.

I mean, they're going to have to say, no, Mr. Trump, you lost.

And now the next question is for President Biden, or, alternately, Biden is going to have to do it.

And I hope that's one of the things that he's preparing to do.

When Trump lies, when he says he won the election, when he says his economy was perfect, when he says the economy is now terrible, whatever piece of the mythology he chooses, Biden is going to have to have some prepared way to say you're wrong.

And shouting that you're lying might not work, and so he's going to need some way of countering him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, it seems almost as if the moderators, the two CNN hosts of this, are representing, not fact-checking so much as reality intervention, but, I mean, it seems like a very, very hard job to do to balance in a polarized society.

And I'm wondering what you would say to them about trying to bring in, and I want to talk about policy for a couple of minutes, how do you get them to say something substantive about the economy, immigration, the Middle East, et cetera?

What's the magic here?

Vivian Salama: I mean, direct questions and just really hold them to account.

And they have to hold each other to account, too.

And that's one of the things is that the moderators, yes, they're going to have to do it.

But Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to have to also hold each other to account, and that's the point of a debate.

Jonathan Karl: There's a real opportunity on the policy stuff from a moderator perspective.

I mean, Donald Trump -- there are some policies that are floating around here.

One is mass deportations of tens of millions of people that are in the United States undocumented.

How is that going to work?

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: And make no mistake, some of the announcements that Joe Biden just made recently also factored directly into a strategy of bringing up immigration in this debate.

I mean, he just had two executive actions, separate executive actions, one that I know from talking to people involved with his campaign, basically the line is going to be, hey, look, we helped to unite families in the U.S. Jeffrey Goldberg: You know, it's interesting to stay on the shark theme, it's almost like that's chum in the water, right, before the debate to sort of talk about allowing more legal immigrants to come in.

I mean, it's really -- Zolan Kanno-Youngs: It's a kind of a high wire balancing act.

But from the strategy perspective for them, it's say what we did, right, and then immediately flip to what do you plan to do.

What do you plan to do?

Because, remember, it's not just about pulling in sort of a swing voter or a Republican that might be undecided.

It's also about energizing your base that might be on the couch come November.

Vivian Salama: And that's where the challenge is going to be for Donald Trump.

Because if you watch him in his rallies, a lot of times he will say that, you know, Joe Biden is the worst president ever.

When I was president, I did X, Y, Z.

Okay, but that's backward-looking.

You have to say what you're going to do next and really lay out your vision for the country moving forward.

And we have not heard that a ton from Donald Trump.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Anne, I want to ask you about another policy issue just as important as immigration or the economy, and that's something that Donald Trump referred to yesterday when he said, for 20 years, I heard that if Ukraine goes into NATO, it's a real problem for Russia.

And I think that's really why this war started.

Basically, Donald Trump is back to the sort of semi-isolationist.

We provoked Russia.

We, the west, provoked Russia.

And I'm wondering to get your -- I wanted to get your commentary on that as a Russia expert, but I'm also wondering if you could place this issue and rank it in terms of importance for the voters.

Anne Applebaum: I mean, I doubt that the issue as such has huge importance for the voters, although there are ways in which it could even change the election in the next couple of months.

I mean, a surprise either way, a breakthrough on the front line, a Russian -- some unexpected piece of aggression could -- I mean, that might suddenly burst into the campaign and change it.

And there are a lot of people who are watching Putin for exactly that.

It's true that Trump has -- I think under the influence of some of his advisers and some of the people around him, he has started to use, once again, this Russian propaganda about how the war was our fault.

I think because that gives him a way of contrasting to Biden.

If I had been in office, it wouldn't have started and so on, and, you know, somehow the U.S. is at fault rather than Russia.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Jon, just in the minute that we have left, I'm curious to know, I want to hear you on what you're looking for out of this debate, something that -- how will you advance the understanding of these two candidates for the American people?

Jonathan Karl: I think that the biggest thing, the single biggest thing is how Biden does.

And does he rise to the occasion and does he calm these fears?

And like I said, this is not just Republican carping, it's really fears among some of his real allies about his cognitive state.

And I think he has the ability to rise to the occasion.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Cognitive state or his ability to -- I mean, is it a physical issue or is it a cognitive issue?

Jonathan Karl: I mean, it's his ability to be quick.

And, look, we're in a visual, I mean, this debate is on television.

How he looks when he takes on Donald Trump is a big part of that, his ability to take this campaign to Donald Trump in what's going to be a vicious fall campaign.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, very quickly, how worried are the Biden people that this doesn't go well?

Vivian Salama: They are worried, but they also point to people underestimating him ahead of the State of the Union and they felt that he did well at the State of the Union.

They say, you all underestimated him, primarily the media.

Watch what happened then.

That's the Joe Biden that we know and he can do it again.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: No teleprompter this time though.

Vivian Salama: But there's no teleprompter.

Jonathan Karl: This is a much tougher venue.