The Penta Podcast Channel

Recapping 2024's first—and only? Presidential debate

• Penta

Share episode

 Across the landscape of our society—whether it's business, sports, entertainment, or politics—it's very rare for all the eyes of the world to stop and concentrate their attention on one event, one moment.

Presidential debates are one of those very rare moments.

Last night’s first—and only?—presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump offered viewers in the U.S. and around the globe the chance to compare the candidates and hear their pitch to voters on why they deserve another four years.

That was last night. This morning? The fallout.

Is this typical "Inside-the-bubble" hysteria or a bigger moment that will shake up the race? The political universe is in a frenzy, with everyone ranging from the Trump and Biden campaigns to down ballot candidates and armchair pundits assessing the impact the debate will have on the trajectory of the race. 

On today’s episode of What’s At Stake, we’ll do that and go a little deeper. We’ll review the debate performances, analyze the strategies of both campaigns going forward, and also assess the immediate and longer-term ramifications last night will have on the business community as we get closer to November and the next Administration. 

Speaker 1:

Hello, welcome back to what's at Stake. Across the landscape of our society, whether it's business, sports, entertainment or politics, it is very rare for all the eyes of the world to stop and concentrate their attention on one event, one moment. Presidential debates are one of those very rare moments. Last night's first and maybe only presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump offered viewers in the US and around the globe the chance to compare the candidates and hear their pitch to voters on why they deserve another four years in what is a historic race between two deeply unpopular incumbents. That was last night. This morning we're dealing with the fallout. Is this typical inside the bubble hysteria or is this a bigger moment that will shake up the race? The political universe is in a frenzy this morning, with everyone, ranging from the Trump and Biden campaigns to down-ballot candidates and armchair pundits, assessing the impact of the debate and what it'll have on the trajectory of the race. And what it'll have on the trajectory of the race.

Speaker 1:

On today's episode of what's at Stake, I'm bringing in Kevin Madden, one of our experts, who's been in these debate rooms, has briefed candidates and prepared them for these moments, and we're going to do that analysis and we're going to go a little deeper. We'll review the debate performances, analyze the strategies of both campaigns going forward and also assess the immediate and longer-term ramifications that last night will have on the business community as we get closer to November and what may be in stake for the next administration. So, Kevin, thank you for joining us this morning. Glad to have you back on the show, Great to be here. Let's just jump right into it. I mean, by all accounts, it was, you know, a pretty bad performance, I think, for President Biden. Maybe not necessarily a good performance for Trump, but at least what we're reading last night, hearing and seeing this morning a lot of attention on Biden's performance. What did you see and tell me what kind of your reaction is after watching this?

Speaker 2:

Well, look, I mean, you have to always remember that debates at their core are exactly that. Remember that debates at their core are exactly that. They are performances. It is the television element of it can't be dismissed the bright lights, the stage, the audience. It's a performance and it's judged that way.

Speaker 2:

And the judging like are the sort of parameters for judging it, or some of the ways that I think even your most, you know, strongest policy advocate or policy expert will look for a command on the stage. They are judged on their energy, they're judged on their presence and, by all accounts, this was a blowout, largely because, as you mentioned earlier, it's not so much that Trump won the debate, it's that Biden lost it. Trump had a fine debate, he was okay. He didn't display any amazing in-depth command of policy or provide a really concrete vision for what he would do over the next four years. It was largely a litigation of both of their presidencies between them. It was a look back at their presidencies versus a look forward for the country. But, by any measure, biden reinforced all of the negative stereotypes about his age and his energy level and that's the main takeaway that the audience had about the performance aspect of this.

Speaker 1:

And that, to your point, was the main concern going into this right that voters are particularly unhappy with their choices and they're being forced to pick between you know two candidates that they'd love to have other options. I think is clear from what we see. Biden had a job to do which is to, you know, show the country I think something like 70% of the country in some of the polling I've seen thinks he's too old for the job. Show them that he can still do it, he can still bring it, and it was really his campaign that pushed for this. You know, almost historically early debate and I have to think their strategy was let's get Biden out there, let's put him in a spot where he can look good, similar to what he did at the State of the Union, and let's drag Trump back into people's living rooms to show this contrast, and it just spectacularly backfired, and you and I talked about this.

Speaker 2:

If you go, if listeners want to go back and listen to our podcast from the State of the Union. Yeah, we talked about this scenario where we're like, look, state of the Union, you're standing up there with a week and a half full of prep and you're reading a script. There's no script in the debate. You cannot. You can prepare, but, and and you can go through your, your, you know you try to execute a strategy, but you're really at the um, uh, you're really exposed to the elements, and I think that's exactly what happened last night.

Speaker 2:

Look, the candidates and campaigns the two strategies were were driven by the worries that each campaign has about their candidates.

Speaker 2:

I think on the Trump side, look, there's a legitimate worry that Trump is going to be unhinged, he's going to be angry, he's going to litigate the past, he is going to go over the top in his criticism and sort of be and put this sort of toxic Trump persona on display and possibly drive away a lot of swing voters.

Speaker 2:

The format largely worked in his favor in that regard the fact that there was Mike cutoffs and he was being disciplined and not interviewing and patiently waiting for his turn to attack Biden and his turn to reinforce what he thought was great about his presidency and the economic performance and how we, and the performance on everything from national security to health care you name it. Biden's strategy and the Biden campaign strategy was to they needed to reverse the momentum in this campaign and they needed to demonstrate or put to rest a lot of the fears that voters had about Biden's age. And they also needed to juice democratic turnout around things like abortion and the future of democracy. When handed both of those topics on a platter, biden reinforced all of the worries about his age and then he largely swung and missed on a lot of these. He didn't drive as hard as effective a contrast. He was like okay on some of those issues, but for the large part he kind of meandered around a lot of those issues and missed chances to really pin Trump down and drive an effective contrast.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this is not a criticism at all of the moderators, but I felt like the first, I don't know eight to 10 questions were really, you know, almost softballs for Biden and you know difficult questions, I think, for Trump around abortion, around democracy, around accepting result, all of it and Biden's performance. Whether you know it was just age, it was over prep, or we saw an hour into the debate that campaigns that he had a cold, whatever it was, he couldn't hit that pitch and you know what could have been a big contrast ended up being a whiff, ended up reinforcing. You know the challenges Biden has with his age. I think likewise to your point. The muted mic and the split screen which was supposed to help Biden backfired on him where he didn't look presidential. That stare off as you're sitting there waiting for the other guy to answer made him look like he was meandering and not really there and it just. You know. I don't know if you can blame the campaign, but almost a disservice to to who they're working with as a candidate.

Speaker 2:

The split screen was brutal. There's no Democrat out there. I mean I have. Surprisingly, you know people shouldn't be surprised, but I have a lot of Democrat friends and you and I were texting during the debate and a lot of other Democrats that I'm friends with were, you know, swapping insights back and forth and, like they just said, do they? You know a lot of folks are saying, do they know, does he know? He's on camera, you know, and the optics of debates are just as important as the specifics of the policies or the answers that you give. So, yeah, it was very difficult to see how all of that preparation that they even put into this really really paid off. It seemed to really hurt Biden's presentation.

Speaker 1:

I'd love your take on how much it hurts, because I think of campaigns as moments and I'm mindful we're still four months from election day. You know this could be a situation where over the next 48 hours, you know, there's enough concern that maybe something does happen with, you know, an intervention with Biden or something I'm a little skeptical of. That I'm more likely to see. We all go away for Fourth of July, we come back and everybody's right back in their camps and we're dealing with the same swing voters and they have four months to fix it. How much do you think this moment impacts the rest of the race?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's a good question. First of all, I'd say on the Democratic freakout, that is very, very real and started about 15 minutes into the debate. There's a 100 hour stopwatch on that. People who are now you know, every single headline this morning is Democrats reassess and try to look for a plan B. And can they? Can they, should they? Will they be able to get Biden out of the race? There's a 100 hour stopwatch on that. That either happens within these next 100 hours of the campaign or it doesn't happen. Right, and I really think there's. There are very few people who can really move the needle on that conversation and the really only one on that is the candidate himself and maybe Joe Biden his wife, first lady.

Speaker 2:

Other than that, there is no you know, there is no concentration of power in one or two other people inside the Democratic Party establishment that can really move that campaign, that can move Biden against his will on that. Second thing is yeah, what happens next? Look, we have a historical comparison here and Obama in 2012,. I was working for Mitt Romney's campaign. We had a debate Our first debate was in Denver and it was almost a 100% consensus that Mitt Romney won that debate. I remember going to the spin room and the Obama campaign was nowhere to be found. We were there to declare victory. They knew we were there to declare victory and they knew that all the spin in the world was not going to change the results of that debate. Here's the big difference, though is that, probably within an hour of that debate performance, Obama knew that he lost, and Obama set out to fix what had had, what had, what had taken place in that debate room and, really within like the next day, was out there firing brimstone on the campaign trail on the attack against Romney and, you know, on the Romney campaign we saw in that. You know that next 48 hours, volunteers showing up at phone bags, volunteers showing up at campaign headquarters looking for lists to go door, knocking small dollars rolling in. People wanted lawn signs, they wanted bumper stickers. I remember sitting on the tarmac on the plane getting ready to take off from Denver and you could tell people were meeting and looking at Mitt Romney as, wow, there could potentially go the next president of the United States.

Speaker 2:

Fast forward. A week and a half later, the race returns exactly to where it was before. That it was an atmospheric change, not a fundamental change. The difference here in this campaign is that the fundamentals were already against President Biden on everything from the economy and concerns about his performance and concerns about his age and concerns about the campaign strategy. So the fundamentals were already bad and now the atmospherics are really bad.

Speaker 2:

So what do you have to do to change it? You have to go out there and, you know, go on the attack against Donald Trump, Reorient everybody, everybody, all the voters out there, including your base voters, including swing voters about the perceptions about your campaign and confront those perceptions about your performance and your age and your ability to be your fitness for the office. But that requires probably three to four stops a day, every single day, all the way until the next debate or the next convention in battleground states and battleground areas all across the country? Does the Biden campaign have the candidate to execute that strategy and alter the trajectory of this race? Right now, the answer to that is no.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And this is this as a Democrat. This is the fundamental concern, because I've seen similar things you talk about. I was, I was with John in 03, and I watched, as you know, in the summer we had three busloads of, you know, college interns going from Boston to New Hampshire every single day, and in December we had one named right Because, you know, these things swing. But this instance is so poor to the branding of Biden of whether he's up for the job and too old for the job and, yes, what's needed out of him right now. I don't know if they physically have the candidate to do that.

Speaker 2:

Here's one other point on that, brian, before I forget. It's a really good point. But the White House and everybody in an official capacity working for the president in both the White House and the campaign have really put this problem on themselves, in the sense that the message every single day, in every single way, about the president and his performance has been that behind closed doors he is a whirling dervish of efficiency and he's sharp as a tack and just they can't even keep up with him. So they have created these higher expectations that the candidate time and time again fails to fulfill. And look, do I have a better strategy for them on how to handle that? Like, not necessarily, but they do have to come to terms with the fact that the campaign has a message that has, you know, set expectations high around these performances and they fail to deliver. And then the other thing is the media, time and time again, has medicated the sort of Morning Joe crowd, has medicated the Democratic faithful into thinking everything's fine.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, let's talk about that for a second, and I might be getting too far out on a limb here, but why not reorient the campaign? Almost an FDR style campaign. Like do you need Biden out there at all? Can you do the behind the desk scripted moments, the advertising? You know, we know what the issues are that are going to move you and I talk about this a lot. There's a I don't know a hundred thousand voters that matter in this whole thing, right, and we know what's going to move them. It's going to be abortion or it's going to be the economy or it's going to be. You know how they're feeling about their life, whether that's crime or prices or whatever. And is there a world in 2024 where you don't need the candidate out there? You don't need his face out there, you don't need his words out there. You just need to hammer home the three points of his record, what he's going to do, and set up the contrast, because the other guy still has his branding problems around, being unhinged, being focused on grievances, looking in the past.

Speaker 2:

Now you really do need the candidate. I mean, it's been in a world where, look, I think in just presidential campaigns, candidates like to touch and feel the merchandise. We see that in the early parts of the campaign, when everybody's in Iowa and New Hampshire and it's 100 people in a gymnasium in the dead of winter. Um, they, they like to really probe the candidates and learn about that. It's a. It's a. It's a much more personalized process than it used to be. Um, because we're in a 24 second media news cycle where everything is being filmed, every single moment is captured, uh and uh, you know, digitally, uh, uh, delivered across the universe, the information universe. So you do need the candidate, but given the drawbacks of this particular candidate, the deficiencies of Joe Biden, the campaign has to make a much more aggressive effort to create some surround sound and a support network of very aggressive surrogates that tell the story of the Biden presidency and his accomplishments. But that does not take away the fact that, at the end of the day, there's only one name on the ballot. The vice presidential pick is not going to be able to do this for you. That goes for both candidates.

Speaker 2:

At the end of the day, it's Trump versus Biden. And you know that's where. That's what we saw last night. Right Like you strip everything away and it is a. It's a contest between two individuals their vision for the country and whether or not they can make the case to the voters who have yet to make up their mind that they're the right person for the next four years. It always comes down to do I want more of the same or do I want change? And you know, with the issues that are driving this debate right now immigration, inflation, you know, security, national security around the globe, and then I think, the other important issues that are going to really turn out a lot of people like, like protecting democracy or the future of health care and abortion, like those are also, you know, going to be very big points in this debate. And I think, just in last night's debate, you have to give the advantage to Trump on how he talked about those issues, to not only his base voters but to those swing voters.

Speaker 1:

So let's go there for a second. If you're advising the Trump camp right now, a second If you're advising the Trump camp right now, how do they make this last more than you know, 100 hours or into next week, like they've got a. I don't imagine there's another debate. I can't imagine Biden signs up for another one. Maybe he'll feel pressured to prove himself in September, but that-.

Speaker 2:

He probably thinks he can fix it. He probably thinks he can fix it, but it's. That's a huge. The people who will be will really freak out about that are down ballot democrats having to go through another 90 minutes like they went through last night.

Speaker 1:

There is no appetite for that I was listening to david urban on cnn and, yeah, I don't think a Bob Casey or John Tester or anyone wants to be. You know, Casey, especially in a swing state like Pennsylvania, how are they going to stand there?

Speaker 2:

They're all going to be running their own races. They're all breaking away right now and running their own races, and that's the right strategy for them. Look, if you're Trump. Look. One of the things that Biden has to be hopeful about is that Trump is really really good about stepping on his own really good moments and his own message. If I'm in the side to Trump campaign right now, I'm saying we have exactly the split screen and exactly the media narrative that we want for at least another week. Let's sit back and do nothing and allow our opponent to twist in the wind and let the Democrat freak out continue. I think they would just be smart to just show up and do a couple of their standard sort of base enthusiasm events in a lot of these battleground states and and and I also think they would be wise to not get another to have another debate that split screen moment, that split screen image, endure as long as possible and wait till they get to their convention, at least.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and and yeah, that's. That's going to be what the media runs and that's going to be the ad content. So, yeah, why give them another chance to do it? Um, I do think Biden you know this will all come down to Biden and Joe Biden and maybe a few other advisors, but the Biden, I know, will probably want to go fight it again and dig into it and try to do more debates, but I don't know who in the party is going to be able to convince them not to do that, and that'll be a big question.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the mechanics of it are very, very difficult. I mean, these are delegates that are committed to Joe Biden. How are you going to peel them off and create some sort of movement at a convention to have a delegate fight? The other thing is Chicago was already going to be messy and the idea that you're going to this convention in that sort of pressure cooker environment and think you're going to choose a new candidate or move in the direction of a new candidate, that's very hard to fathom. And then it's like where's the? Where's the consensus or where does the momentum behind which candidate and why to replace them? Right? I mean, kamala Harris isn't going to be like, oh yeah, I'll step aside for Gavin Newsom and Gavin Newsom is not going to say, well, I'll be, I'll, I'll be fine with Kamala Harris. She's probably even a weaker candidate than Biden. And then where is the organization, the momentum and the infrastructure around any other candidate to drive Democrat unity in the space of the next three to four months? Very, very.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's the thing, right, Clock's ticking. So to your point on 100 hours, like you've got to make this decision fast because, yeah, you're going to have a messy convention anyway. And you got to come out of that convention and now we're in a totally different scenario than what we've been in. Now you are in a incumbent in Trump running against and branding a newcomer to voters, and that newcomer, if we go down this road, is going to have, you know, 90 days to convince Americans they're the right one and why Trump's not. And that's an unbelievable task.

Speaker 2:

Outside observers need to realize. This isn't like a city council campaign, where you're handing out flyers on the street corner. This is a multi-billion dollar entity designed to elect the leader of the world. You cannot put one of those together with the type of consensus and unity that you need to in the space of a couple of months.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or the comparison. I feel like people act like the Democrat and the Republican Party are like Fortune 50 companies there's not a next person up, there's not a succession plan, necessarily, and especially in these situations where it's all right, our CEO retired, here's the new CEO and the whole unit continues functioning as it was. This will be a just almost unfathomable kind of moment and debate and tear the party apart before we have to then go bring it all together for voters.

Speaker 2:

The House of Cards has ruined everybody's expectations, brian, on how you know, the scriptwriters make this stuff come together very easily in season one and season two, but that's not how it happens in real life.

Speaker 1:

You know and look, no disrespect to my friends in the White House, but I had, when I got, I think I sent it to you and I saw that tweet, you know, 40 minutes into the debate of Biden has a cold. I just couldn't get like deep out of my head of like 10 staffers huddled around a screen. What do we do? What do we do? What do we say? Let's say he has a cold. Yeah, let's make a little pivot. Obviously we sit here at Penta.

Speaker 1:

Our work is helping our clients navigate moments like this and rules and kind of a last push that you see in every administration, whether it's a first term or second term, as they get closer to election. I kind of had the sense this morning when I woke up, of, you know, wow, there's probably a lot of folks within the executive branch and agencies that woke up this morning and said I got 90 days left to get my agenda done and I better put my foot on the gas. Maybe they already were, but I think you know if you're sitting in Washington, you're a head of office. You got to be thinking about what's going to be jammed through in the next few days, because folks are now worried. You know there might not be a second term.

Speaker 2:

I think you're right. I think the stopwatch theory applies to the process of running government as well. Everybody's time horizon across the government, whether it's in the legislative branch or in agencies, it just got shrunk down to a potential. The potential for it to be shrunk down is very real now. So I think you're going to see. You know, people move with a lot more urgency. Scenario of maybe not being around in, you know if you're in, if you're in one of these, if you're in one of these agencies or one of these cabinet departments, and you know and the prospect of having a different level of leadership eight months from now, running the place just got more real. So all of the conversations and scenario planning, all of that has just taken on a new sense of urgency and I think the timetables are all getting sped up on them and it's a pretty significant change, right, I mean it's a change with any flip in administration.

Speaker 1:

but you are looking in this scenario you're looking at a Trump 2.0, where you know he's learned and his folks have learned how the government works and they kind of know what to do this time and they've made it very clear they're going to make some big changes. Whether it's the Federal Reserve, whether it's other agencies, the FTC, I mean, they're coming in with a pretty strong agenda. So this is not the normal course of action of you've got a few months to continue or wrap things up and things might tweak a little bit. This might be wholesale changes to what we're seeing.

Speaker 2:

Well, if there's one through line on, the advice that we've always provided the clients here is that volatility is the defining characteristic of the political and legislative environment, and I think that extends to the regulatory environment too.

Speaker 2:

So the counsel we've always provided, I think, still prevails here, which is that you have to be very vigilant in protecting the profile of your company, your organization, your industry, and we're we're about to see how things quickly shift, or if they shift right, and the only way to really know that is to be able to do the research and to, to do the intelligence gathering, to, to to really gauge whether or not there's been a significant shift in constituencies, there's been a significant shift in public perceptions about an issue and where some of these political coalitions are migrating, which way, one way or the other. And so just that level of planning that's required for your profile here at the national level, with federal policymakers, but also this is going to extend now all the way down ballot, across the country, and so in state houses as well, these same exact conversations are being had. I think that's why we see the organizations that succeed in this environment are the ones that do not go on instinct, but instead, they rely on the data and the research about trends in the news, trends in the marketplace, to inform the best strategies for how they position themselves, and they're the ones that are going to succeed in the next environment, because six months from now, we're going to be having these exact same conversations about how look things are. Things are, things are moving very quickly. Whether that's a new administration or the same administration, we're still going to have, no matter who wins this election, have no matter who wins this election a lame duck president facing razor thin margins, political margins in the Congress, and they're going to be facing, probably, approval ratings that are still in the high 40s if they're good.

Speaker 2:

Trevor Burrus Right, robert Brokamp and the very elusive political capital that's going to be driving decision making in Washington DC and beyond.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I look, I think that the smart companies and a lot of our clients are already well focused on this. But last night put even more of a magnifying glass on those Senate races and those House races because, you're right, it's going to be razor thin margins. But even with those razor thin margins, there's a big difference if it's you know, a Republican Congress with a Republican president versus you know, a Democratic House with a couple votes. So I think the ante just went up on all of that as well.

Speaker 2:

And you know how I always say hope is not a strategy. Well, you know, I think the Democrat strategy was like hey, well, you know, let's hope Biden pulls it out and let's hope that he performs really well in the debate. But what happens when hope doesn't really show up at the decision making time, like you, are left without an effective, without an effective strategy. So, thinking ahead, planning, scenario planning, doing the hard work of building out your stakeholder profile with as many of your priority audience as possible, it all pays off in the end.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, Kevin, thanks. Thanks for coming on the show. We'll, we'll leave it there and, uh, I think the clock starts on those a hundred hours. We'll all be watching, uh, everything closely this weekend and into next week, but, um, it'll be quite a race this summer.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I look forward to um to the next couple of weeks and months and really just breaking down what's happening on a regular basis so that you know we can stay one step ahead of all these trends and all these debates that are really shaping the public marketplace, whether that's politics or business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right. And to all our listeners please keep tuning in, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll do a lot more on this topic, as well as what's happening in Europe and the UK elections and the Brussels elections. There's a lot changing this year and we'll be on top of all of that. So appreciate everyone tuning in to listen. We'll be back next week with another edition of what's at Stake.