Once upon a time, back when a global pandemic didn’t ground planes, derail responsible political rallies and force presidential candidates to build television studios in their rec rooms, we gathered every four years in familiar fieldhouses on college campuses to watch the White House contenders match wits and canned jabs. We watched the sparring together as a political press corps, then entertained and ultimately ignored campaign operatives who protested that the quotes we were using weren’t actually said.
It was a quaint time, in retrospect, of performance art — and one I covet as the first presidential debate of 2020 is about to start in my childhood backyard of Cleveland.
We are about to witness the first head-to-head of President Donald Trump against former Vice President Joe Biden. In the middle of a pandemic, the contrast is likely to be striking. In the hours before showtime, Biden is sitting with his heir’s share of advisers helping him fine-tune his answers. Trump is watching Twitter and his rally crowds to see what attack lines resonate. As my TIME colleague Molly Ball smartly notes: “After four unrelenting years, Trump will find it difficult to change anyone’s preconceived opinion of him.”
Biden, on the other hand, has a chance to surprise everyone.
It was eight years ago when I rolled onto the serene campus of Centre College in Danville, Ky., to watch Biden match jabs with his Republican counterpart, then-Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, at the 2012 V.P. debate. Over the course of the afternoon, I pulled aside Biden’s coterie of advisers to hear them set the stage. I had anticipated aggressive lowering of expectations, based on his somewhat-cuffed performance in 2008 against Sarah Palin, the half-term Governor of Alaska whom John McCain selected as his running mate. But in 2012, Biden’s team was happy to have the bar raised. The Biden team wanted everyone to know that the V.P. was ready for this — so much so that Dr. Jill Biden was hopping on her own jet to the campus that evening to watch the show after she wrapped up her day teaching college students in northern Virginia.
