Biden’s High-Stakes Prep: Facing The First Debate Curse

Joe Biden was on cleanup duty. 

It was October 4, 2012, the morning after Barack Obama had delivered a debate performance so poor that even Obama himself later described it as a "stinker."

Obama's delivery was flat, convoluted, and passive, creating a calamitous scene where aides backstage appeared paralyzed before reluctantly facing reporters in the spin room. The task fell to Biden, then vice president, to stand outside a grocery store in Iowa and find a charitable way to describe his boss's performance.

“He was presidential,” Biden offered, later acknowledging the obvious: “All debates are tough.”

Twelve years later, the memory of Obama’s tortured outing in Denver lingered as Biden underwent practice sessions at Camp David, preparing for his first debate as an incumbent against former President Donald Trump on Thursday in Atlanta.

Biden’s team — including some who had helped prepare Obama for his debates — undoubtedly hoped to avoid a curse afflicting incumbents for at least four decades: a weak first debate that left an opening for their rivals to gain the initiative.

“Presidents are steeped in prose. They haven’t debated in four years, they know a lot, and they tend to want to defend their records,” said David Axelrod, a CNN contributor and former senior adviser to Obama who helped prepare him for debates. “The wildcard here is Trump, who is also a former president and hasn’t debated in four years.”

Televised debates have long been a storied part of presidential campaigns, creating history-making moments for candidates. Sitting presidents face the added challenge of delivering strong performances on a rare night when the trappings of the office are set aside and they confront their rivals face-to-face.

Unaccustomed to direct and hostile confrontation after the insulated deference of the Oval Office and Air Force One, presidents are rarely forced to square off in public. In the past, this has translated into first debate performances that seem flat-footed, meandering — or, in Obama’s case, contemptuous of the entire exercise.

Trump himself fell victim to the first-debate curse in 2020. He arrived on the stage in Cleveland looking slightly unwell (he tested positive for COVID-19 a few days later) and proceeded to hector and interrupt Biden until the Democrat told him to “shut up.” Trump later told aides he felt he could have been less aggressive.

Biden hardly expects deference from Trump during the showdown at CNN’s studio in Atlanta. Unlike past incumbents, he is facing a rival who has been insulated in a world of obeisance since leaving the White House.

This year, neither candidate has the benefit of recent real-world practice. Trump skipped this year’s Republican primary debates, passing up a training exercise past challengers have enjoyed. In some ways, this puts both men on equal footing when they walk onto Thursday’s debate stage.

“You have two people who don’t like each other very much, so the question becomes, can they keep the debate centered on issues rather than themselves?” said Brett O’Donnell, a Republican strategist who has spent years preparing presidents and candidates for debates.

Ronald Reagan, like Biden, retreated to Camp David for debate preparations in 1984. He didn’t appear to his aides entirely engaged in the exercises. When briefing books were left out for him to peruse at night, they were found untouched the next morning — cast aside while Reagan watched movies.

After a rambling final answer during the debate, Reagan confessed to aides that he’d flopped. His performance was so poor that, at a news conference two days later, the Republican National Committee chairman had to explain “it wasn’t because of any physical or mental deficiency.” 

Reagan went on to defeat Walter Mondale in a 49-state landslide, but the first debate served as a nerve-racking wake-up call inside the White House. Eight years later, George H.W. Bush failed to land punches against Bill Clinton. Unlike Reagan, he wasn’t able to dramatically improve his performance by the second debate, when he was caught on camera glancing at his watch while Clinton engaged with an audience member’s question about the recession.

“Was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah, and maybe that’s why I was looking at it — only 10 more minutes of this crap,” Bush would recount later — after he’d lost the election.

Clinton is the one incumbent over the last several decades who avoided the first-debate curse. His successor, George W. Bush, wasn’t so lucky: his first face-off with John Kerry in 2004 was marred by scowls, smirks, and a general sense of surprise at being confronted by someone after four years in the presidential bubble.

For Obama, the disastrous showing in 2012 came down to various factors. He was distracted by presidential duties, disdainful of performative politics, and displeased at having to stand as Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s equal on stage.

“They are out of practice, and they are treated with such deference usually, it’s discomforting,” Axelrod said. “It throws them off their game to treat them with no deference at all.”

Over a weekend of prep sessions outside Las Vegas, where an exact replica of the debate stage was constructed inside a hotel ballroom, Obama openly complained about how bored he was. He escaped at one point to visit the Hoover Dam.

“It’s a drag,” he told a group of reporters who had tailed him to Nevada. “They’re making me do my homework.”

Walking off the debate stage in Denver, Obama didn’t initially realize just how bad his confrontation with Romney had gone. Only later, after reviewing videotape of the encounter, did he recognize the extent of the damage.

“On Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position,” Obama told Romney during one of the exchanges that caused his advisers to cringe.

Obama ultimately blamed himself for the poor outing. When the aide who led his practice sessions in Las Vegas, Ron Klain, volunteered to resign, Obama rejected the offer.

Twelve years later, Klain spent this past weekend at Camp David, helping Biden prepare to face Trump.