How Does Joe Bring Off The Debate?

As of two weeks ago, and even up until this morning, plans for Joe's debate prep leadingup to the June 27 debate were vague. Here's a June 10 story from AP:

After back-to-back trips to Europe, President Joe Biden plans to head to Camp David next week to prepare for his first 2024 debate with former President Donald Trump, hunkering down at the woodsy Maryland hideaway that has hosted many similar cram sessions in the past.

.. . A person with knowledge of the president’s plans, who insisted on anonymity to more freely discuss them, suggested Biden could spend the better part of a week at Camp David getting ready for the first debate.

But others involved in the planning said Monday that details were still being worked out, including how many days Biden would devote to prep. They said exactly where he’d be doing it, at Camp David or elsewhere, had not been finalized.

But now we know! As of this morning, according to ABC News,

With a week to go until the first presidential debate, President Joe Biden heads to Camp David on Thursday to prepare for his critical matchup with former President Donald Trump.

. . . According to a campaign official, Ron Klain, Biden's former chief of staff, is leading the debate preparations. Other senior campaign aides and longtime advisers, including Cedric Richmond, a former White House aide and current campaign co-chair, will also be on hand.

This won't be Klain's first time in a leading role. In addition to assisting Biden in his 2020 debate prep, he led Hillary Clinton's preparation in 2016, Barack Obama's in 2008 and 2012 and John Kerry's in 2004.

In 2020, Biden said his debate prep strategy involved "going over what [Trump] has said and multiple lies he's told," in an interview with NBC News. This year, Biden's debate prep could look similar with his facing the same opponent.

This leaves two open questions, first whether the 2020 strategy will work, and then the bigger question of whether Joe can allay doubts about his cognitive abilities. As to the first, acccording to Axios,

Senior Democrats, including some of President Biden's aides, are increasingly dubious about his theory for victory in November, which relies on voter concerns about Jan. 6, political violence, democracy and Donald Trump's character.

. . . A Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign told Axios: "It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary."

. . . Longtime Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson, who worked for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 primary against Biden, told Axios: "If the election were today, we would lose. Can that change? Yes. Is it on the path to do so? I don't see that yet."

"The stakes for the debate" on June 27 between Biden and Trump "are sky high," he said.

The accounts we've seen suggest that debate prep for Joe will involve programming him with talking points that refer to prior Trump remarks ranging from the "fine people" at Charlottesville to injecting bleach to cure COVID to the "bloodbath" if he loses in 2024, as well as his status as a "convicted felon". A good example of this strategy was in the 2020 debate where Joe was able to pull out a rehearsed reference to the since-discredited letter from 51 former intelligence officials claiming Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation.

We might expect Joe to do something similar this year -- but I have my doubts, even if that's his handlers' intent. This brings up the bigger question that people will have about the debate, Joe's condition. As of last year, there were reports that Joe has adopted a reduced work schedule:

Days after the 80-year-old formally announced he would run for re-election in 2024, Axios reported Friday that aides say it’s tough to schedule “public or private events” with Biden at certain times of day — namely weekends, mornings, and evenings.

In fact, the report adds, most of Biden’s public events happen between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

. . . The report added that while Biden’s close advisers insist he’s mentally sharp and other officials say the president has great stamina “for his age,” some aides have compared Biden to an aging monarch protected by courtiers at all costs.

This will inevitably limit the time available for debate prep. In addition, the reports from unnamed diplomats at the G7 that Joe is unfocused at meetings suggest that the prep sessions may suffer from the same problem. In addition, the 90-minute debate format works against the handlers' strategy of limiting the time he has available in the public eye to make mistakes:

The approach also has the appearance of a strategy aimed at minimizing the potential for Biden to make mistakes in a razor-close election. Some of Biden’s verbal missteps have occurred when he’s talking at length, veers off the prepared text or answers a reporter’s question when that wasn’t part of the plan.

And there's still the problem that no matter how much prep Joe gets, his memory may still not follow through. Just the day before yesterday,

President Biden appeared to freeze up and temporarily forget the name of his Homeland Security Secretary during a White House event Tuesday.

. . . He thanked Congress and Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, but seemed to trail off when trying to remember Mayorkas’ name.

"I’m not sure I’m going to be able to introduce you all the way," Biden said, eliciting laughter from the audience.

There's the additional problem that Joe's handlers scheduled him for back-to-back trips to Europe, with the Juneteenth interlude, followed immediately by cross-country flights to the Hollywood fundraiser. Joe wound up with highly problematic visuals across all of them, when I suspect the handlers' intent instead was to set him up with a triumphal progress leading to the June 27 debate.

I've got to surmise that what they didn't factor in was the level of fatigue this would produce in an octogenarian. This must certainly have been a factor in his repeated gaffes and freezeups over the whole period. Even Byron York was forced to conclude,

One thing is certain: If the Juneteenth event showed some sort of problem with the president, it will happen again. The White House will not be able to say “This did not happen” whenever something does indeed happen.

Let's keep in mind that Joe's handlers were completely responsible for his exhausting schedule throughout this month. He probably needed at least a week to unwind between the D-Day trip snd the G7, which he didn't get -- but then they added extra events like Juneteenth, the fundraiser, the amnesty announcement Tuesday, followed by yet another fundraiser that hight, which culminated in problems getting into his SUV.

I dont think a week of enrforced rest alone at Camp David would be enough to perk Joe up -- but at least in theory, he's supposed to prepping for the debate. This takes me back to my days in tech, where the project team, which had been falling behind schedule for months and had a final deadline coming up on Monday, said they'd just work all weekend to get caught up. Right.