There’s a bit of déjà vu in the air ahead of Thursday night’s presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Given how much we’ve seen these two very familiar faces, it makes a certain amount of sense that this debate is being held so early in the year, coming even before the party conventions officially nominate them.
But since Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration, the two haven’t interacted publicly since the conclusion of their final debate in 2020. With that in mind it would seem that there would be some benefit to rewinding the clock to the previous election and seeing if there’s anything to glean ahead of their upcoming meeting.
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The first debate in September 2020 was nearly unwatchable when it first aired; four years removed it has become entirely unpalatable
It turns out that “some” was the operative word there. The first debate in September 2020 was nearly unwatchable when it first aired; four years removed it has become entirely unpalatable even when played back at twice the normal speed. Moderator Chris Wallace struggled to, well, moderate Trump, having to tell the then-president within the first 10 minutes that “you’re debating him, not me. Let me ask my question.” It didn’t get better as the time stretched on, seemingly into infinity; each question from Wallace provoked a new round of heckling from Trump and clapbacks from Biden.
It would have been one thing if there were substantive points being made during that crosstalk. But I’d bet if you were to edit down the whole of the first debate to simply Wallace’s questions and the answers directly related to those questions, the whole affair would run half as long. CNN’s choice to have the candidates on mute unless answering a question will help keep the train on the rails this time around — but I would caution against mistaking the relative quiet for Trump’s being more disciplined.
Trump did fare better in that year’s other debate, held in October. Having skipped the planned second debate after being hospitalized with Covid, Trump came across as more focused and able to sustain attacks on Biden’s record. It didn’t hurt that NBC News anchor Kristen Welker was better able to keep the debaters on track, giving them ample time to speak without the free-for-all feeling of the first round. Biden, for his part, held his own in both debates, coming across as knowledgeable about the issues while deflecting Trump’s barbs.
More than anything else, rewatching both debates is like peering inside a time capsule. This isn’t the same country that it was four years ago, when the U.S. was in the depths of the pandemic and filled with deep uncertainty about when a Covid vaccine would be widely available. That was before Trump supporters launched an attack on the U.S. Capitol and the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation, before Roe v. Wade fell and abortion surged to the top of voters’ minds. These debates occurred before Trump was a convicted criminal and before concerns about inflation were top of mind for many Americans. More than anything else, rewatching both debates is like peering inside a time capsule. Moreover, the two candidates aren’t the same as they were four years ago. The presidency’s aging effect is even more pronounced looking back at Biden’s demeanor in those debates. He wasn’t exactly young in 2020, but he moved less stiffly, and his voice sounded fuller than at this year’s the State of the Union address. Biden did show during that speech that he can still command a room and exude energy to the point that conservatives began falsely insinuating that he was doped up. But given the media focus on his age, many viewers will be viewing him through that lens despite Trump’s being almost as old and much more of a threat to the country’s well-being. Meanwhile, the Trump of 2020 was chaotic when speaking and frequently struggled to stay on point, and both traits have become more pronounced in the years since. Even in legal depositions, in which he once knew to stay on track, he has become discursive and meandering. He has become almost entirely unable to comment on anything without launching into a whiny rant about how much he’s supposedly been mistreated. It’s much more likely we see the unhinged version of Trump that we got at the first debate than the relatively more focused one we saw on display in October 2020. The biggest takeaway from revisiting these debates isn’t any insight into how the candidates’ views have shifted or what kind of strategy they might deploy. It’s how much we’ve forgotten about how truly bad things were this time four years ago. Former presidents’ popularity tends to rise in comparison to their time in office. Trump is the latest to benefit from this phenomenon, with many voters now having a misplaced nostalgia for his presidency. It will be to Biden’s credit for him to remind Americans that things are better than they were when his predecessor left office. Accordingly, the only way Trump comes across well is if he’s able to play the role of stable, trustworthy leader that he channeled in October 2020, suppressing every instinct of his in the process.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
