The truth sometimes stutters

Like many other global citizens with an interest in American politics, I watched the recent presidential debate between US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump with alarm and dismay, emerging profoundly depressed by Biden’s lackluster performance. His rousing State of the Union speech last March, which I also watched, had raised my expectations, as it surely did the Democratic Party’s, that he would come out swinging and send Trump flying out of that arena with the punch to end all punches.

He managed to throw a few good ones – I especially liked “You have the morals of an alley cat!” But in the end – or should I say, pretty much throughout the debate – he lost steam, stuttered and strayed. Fighting Joe stayed home; Soporific Joe turned up. Even Trump, who lied his way through the debate with his customary sneer and swagger, seemed surprised by the win being handed to him by his opponent and by all the media commentators looking on.

Those commentators would later do the math and conclude that Trump had told about 30 lies and misrepresentations over the 90-minute bout, while agreeing that Biden had also made some false assertions, though none as outrageous as Trump’s charge that Democratic policy included killing babies even after they were born. None of this post-mortem will matter to Trump’s base, used to swallowing whatever comes out of The Donald’s mouth as God’s own truth. It mattered to Biden’s, because it seemed to confirm their deepest fears – and what had until then been a nasty snicker from the other side – that the incumbent was mentally and physically inadequate to the task of leading America for four more years, let alone beating Trump in November.

When I reviewed the transcript of that debate – which I suspect will rank near the bottom in the history of presidential debates for quality of thought and expression – I had to conclude that the truth was poorly told and the lies came through loud and clear. Biden ran through the numbers with professorial precision: “40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally… billionaires pay 8.2 percent in taxes… $8,000 per family written off under the Affordable Care Act… everybody