Biden, once an orator, reaches for rhetorical flourish again

  early months of Joe Biden’s third White House bid were marked with uneven debate performances and winding town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. That contrast to loquacious, eloquent young senator who first sought presidency 33 years ago, struck even some friendly Democrats and fed Republican narrative that 77-year-old was longer fit to le.

Biden did much to dispel that caricature Thursday night during his 24-minute dress accepting Democratic Party’s presidential mination. His performance validates at least some of frustrations former vice president and his aides have expressed privately through months of viral videos of “Biden gaffes” and “Sleepy Joe” invective peddled by President Donald Trump, himself a septunarian who mangles syntax and regularly speaks or tweets meandering, nsensical thoughts.

“It was a beautiful, powerful speech that hit so many tes,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who worked for minee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.

Political observers from both parties broly agreed that Biden exceeded expectations Trump h set for his Democratic rival with months of attacks. But some Republicans and Democrats said Trump may also have helped Biden by reducing expectations for anyone seeking presidency.

“For 24 minutes, every American who watched it escaped our current reality and was imagining a world without Donald Trump. And that alone me it a good speech,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and outspoken critic of president.

Trump’s quips about Biden’s and mental acuity “may have lowered bar” for Biden, Finney ded, “but Trump has also lowered bar on presidency” with constant, personal attacks on political rivals, media critics and even many Republicans. “So part of what Biden did is remind people that it’s OK to raise that bar again,” Finney said.

Both men have more tests upcoming. Republicans convene ir convention Monday, and Trump’s acceptance speech is set for Thursday from White House lawn. Biden has a sit-down interview alongside his running mate, Kamala Harris, that will air Sunday on ABC.

Trump, 74, has stumbled through some of his own interviews recently, bragging to Fox News that he h passed a physician’s cognition test meant to flag signs of dementia in older patients. Days later, Trump repeatedly misrepresented U.S. response to COVID-19 pandemic and spre of virus in an interview with Axios. neless, president boasted to Fox News anchor Chris Wallace that Biden couldn’t endure pressures of such interviews.

“Let Biden sit through an interview like this. He’ll be on ground crying for Mommy,” said Trump, who like Biden speaks in tably different clips than he did when he was younger.

Biden has done many interviews with local network affiliates in battleground states since clinching Democratic mination, but national interviews and press conferences have been rare.

For w, former vice president is relishing a speech that evoked an earlier period of his career.

A Washington Post analysis in 1986, as Biden hopscotched country to state Democratic Party dinners ahe of his first presidential bid, described “his capacity for stirring sparks in burned-out and broken-hearted” with “pyrotechnic burst of quotations from Kennedys and Martin Lur King Jr.”

He launched his first presidential bid a year later as a 43-year-old senator calling for generational change. “’We must rekindle fire of idealism in our society, for thing suffocates promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference,” he said, evoking John F. Kennedy in a speech at Amtrak station near his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

Joe Trippi, who worked for Biden rivals Gary Hart and Dick Gephardt that cycle, compared him to candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

“He was new, young senator, up-and-coming. Strong orator and t of Washington yet,” said Trippi, a veteran Democratic strategist.

Still, Biden’s weaknesses were visible. same Washington Post writer who lavished praise ted his penchant for asking “such wordy, windy, discursive questions” that he’d exhaust most his time in Senate committee hearings. Freed from such limits on campaign trail w, Biden sometimes cuts off his own answers: “I kw I’ve gone on too long.”

Biden also has never hidden that he’s a stutterer, for deces telling of how he’d memorize works of his favorite Irish poets and recite m in mirror as a boy. Seamus Heaney earned a spot in Biden’s acceptance speech Thursday as he called for America to “make hope and history rhyme.”

But his private challenge has figured more prominently in 2020 than before. Biden’s most in-depth interview as a 2020 candidate came for a magazine profile on him as a stutterer. And on night he accepted Democratic mination, he was hailed by 13-year-old Brayden Harrington for helping boy overcome his own stutter.

Biden has long been famous for verbal missteps beyond any stutter, a point Trump campaign has zeroed in on in viral videos and memes. This campaign cycle, he’s referred to Vermont when he’s in New Hampshire and said that any Black American voting for Trump “ain’t Black.” catch-all explanation from Biden allies is that he’s “auntic.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has written extensively on political communication, said video compilations of such mistakes are irrelevant, ting that similar ones could be put toger for anyone who speaks publicly. She ded that such clips on older candidates also risk stirring voters’ unconscious biases.

She said prepared speeches and even debates, during which candidates lean heavily on practiced talking points, don’t necessarily offer voters right window to a candidate’s mind, eir.

professor argued that more important test for Biden and Trump would be extended “extemporaneous” interactions with voters or journalists asking tough follow-up questions. She ted Trump alrey has shown that he “wanders all over place” in interviews even on focused topics. Biden, she said, owes it to voters to do more interviews.

“We’re trying to figure out wher se people have a capacity to govern,” she said. “Can y absorb evidence and provide a coherent answer? question is: Who are we going to get as president?"