Photo: CNN
As this post publishes we are approximately 72 hours into “the narrative” of the first presidential debate of 2024.
President Biden and former President Trump met in Atlanta on June 27 for the first-ever televised presidential debate between candidates who ran against each other in the previous election and who have both served in the White House.
The post debate analysis of Biden’s performance has been harsh. So harsh that Trump’s performance has been largely over-looked.
The narrative is one way to describe the conventional wisdom in the public conversation about a person or an issue. Going into this debate the narrative around Biden had been that he might be too old to serve a second term. It was his job and the job of his campaign the reverse that narrative - as he did following the State of the Union address earlier this year. Instead, his halting delivery, low raspy voice, and mannerisms reinforced the narrative. In short, he looked and sounded like an 81 year old man, not the loquacious national politician the American people have come to know over the last fifty-years.
With four months remaining in the campaign the question has become; can Biden reverse the “old man” narrative in time to win re-election? We don’t know.
One thing we do know is different about the building of narratives in modern public relations is that narratives are both hard to build and hard to de-construct. Because the typical news cycle is now often less than twenty-four hours it is possible for those subject to a wave of negative publicity to survive simply by continuing to move forward. If you behave as if it never happened, then for most observers, it never happened.
The post debate criticism facing Biden is not unlike the 2016 Access Hollywood controversy involving Trump. When the videotape was released there were immediate calls by some for Trump to get out of the race, but he and his closest supporters chose to hunker down and ride it out. He survived and he went on to win the election.
Bottom Line: In earlier presidential races Biden’s debate performance may have spelled the immediate end of his campaign. But that’s under the old rules. The new game is much faster paced and stubborn candidates with a steel backbone can sometimes survive just by moving on.