WASHINGTON — For all the memos and briefing books that presidential candidates absorb, there comes a time during debate prep when an aide simply needs to step forward with a bit of helpful, plainspoken encouragement.
“At some point, you have to walk into the room and say, ‘We’re going to kick his f—— ass,’” James Carville, an architect of Bill Clinton’s White House victory in 1992, said in an interview. “‘We’re going to clock this mother——, you understand?’”
Ahead of the first general election debate Thursday, President Joe Biden has been holed up at Camp David, Maryland, with advisers, scripting put-downs and one-liners that they hope will trigger a tantrum that makes Donald Trump sound unglued.
Trump is taking a more casual approach, mixing private policy sessions with campaign appearances in which he has predicted without evidence that Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs that sharpen his performance on the debate stage.
Millions of voters will watch the debate live; those who don’t will undoubtedly see their social media feeds crammed with memes that might indelibly shape their perceptions of the candidates. No other event this election season may have quite the same potential to upend a race that is rated a tossup.
NBC News spoke to more than a dozen strategists and former officials from both parties who’ve worked on presidential debates to see what Biden and Trump must do to win.
A consensus is that if Trump shows up composed and disciplined, he’ll go a long way toward reassuring Americans who worry about his stability and gain ground with the voters he needs. Should he use his time to rehash old grievances that have nothing to do peoples’ lives, he’s in for a tough night, many of the strategists agreed.
“If Trump remains calms and collected, they [the Biden campaign] have got problems,” said Judd Gregg, a Republican former senator from New Hampshire who has played various opponents over the years in mock presidential debates.
‘Blurting out words for no reason’
So, which Trump will the nation see in Atlanta?
“We don’t know, do we?” said Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker and Trump ally.
Trump’s political base is locked in, but MAGA isn’t a big enough movement to swing an election outright. He’ll need independent and suburban female voters, and for them he must appear “sane,” said Jim Messina, who was President Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2012.
The debate rules might work to Trump’s advantage, some operatives believe. When it’s not a candidate’s turn to speak, CNN will cut his microphone. So viewers may not hear Trump if he tries to interrupt Biden, which he did so often during a 2020 debate that Biden snapped at him to “shut up.”
“The muting thing is great for us and democracy,” said Philippe Reines, who played Trump during Hillary Clinton’s debate rehearsals in 2016. “But they’ll be able to hear each other, and there will be some weird moments.”
“He’s not going to sit there quietly,” Reines said of Trump. “He’s going to continue to talk, and Biden will hear him, and Biden will respond at some point. You’ll have this weird situation where Biden will look like he is blurting out words for no reason.”
‘Stay away from the age issue’
For Biden, the debate is a chance to overcome misgivings about his age and acumen that amount to the biggest drag on his candidacy. If he can fluently field questions from the moderators while deflecting Trump’s attacks, he may allay doubts that he’s up to the job.
Hard as that sounds, the boot camp Biden is immersed in is a strain in its own right — one that has left younger candidates visibly angry and resentful.
Obama stopped a prep session during his 2012 re-election campaign and told his aides, “‘If you guys think this is so g——ed easy, you do it,’” Messina recalled. With that, Obama left the room to take a walk.
Jack Kemp, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 1996, got so annoyed with Gregg, who played the part of Al Gore, that he gave him the finger and stalked off.
No one zinger that Biden’s team cooks up will be enough to make voters forget his age, the strategists agreed. Concerns about Biden’s overall fitness are too deeply rooted.
The master class in deflecting the age issue came in 1984, when President Ronald Reagan, then 73, said at a debate with Democrat Walter Mondale that he wouldn’t “exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Even Mondale had to laugh.
“The age issue will never entirely go away,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a senior aide in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “It’s not like Biden is going to set a new paradigm, as Reagan did.
“Periodically, the president needs to prove to people the vigor with which he’s doing the job,” she continued. “The State of the Union speech [in March] was a big moment to accomplish that. And the debates are another big moment.”
Reagan entered the crucial debate with Mondale having flubbed an earlier one. Among those privately coaching him through an intermediary was Republican former President Richard Nixon.
In his forthcoming book, “Behind Closed Doors — In the Room with Reagan and Nixon,” ex-Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian writes about Nixon’s private advice: “Reagan should not be concerned with facts and figures. The most important thing is demeanor. … Your best commodity is Reagan and keeping the whole thing on the basis of the economy. … Keep him upbeat so he’s buoyant and strong. Mondale is still a plodding, dull man.”
Biden could try to blunt questions about age by stressing competence, instead, some strategists said. Gingrich suggested a few lines Biden could trot out at Trump’s expense.
“If I were Biden, I would stay away from the age issue and just say, ‘Look, I was wise enough not to try to overthrow the U.S. government,’” Gingrich said in an interview. “Go through a list of five things in a row and say, ‘I would rather have my age with wisdom than your total lack of seriousness.’”
‘Can he shoot straight?’
Biden has assembled a seasoned crew at Camp David to make sure he’s ready. Running the team is Ron Klain, a former White House chief of staff who has carved out a subspecialty training Democratic presidential nominees for televised debates.
Klain studies GOP candidates the way an NFL coach watches game tape of opposing teams, looking for patterns and weaknesses to exploit, said Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.
One of Klain’s methods is to research what the opponent has been saying in the run-up to a debate, on the theory that the opponent will repeat the same lines onstage, he once wrote in a memo.
“Ron is able to predict how an opponent will react in particular situations, and in Hillary’s case in 2016, she was able to trigger Trump multiple times during the debate,” Mook said.
One such moment came during the first Trump-Clinton debate on Long Island, New York. Clinton needled Trump in a personal way that quickly threw Trump on the defensive. Five minutes in, she mentioned a $14 million loan he’d gotten from his father, challenging the notion that he was self-made.
“I remember us working on that point, and boom, she landed it!” Mook said.
Klain has even more fodder to work with now. Last month, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts related to hush money payments to a porn star. He was indicted over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election that resulted in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. FBI agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and seized classified documents as part of a criminal investigation that led to his indictment a year ago.
“If I was advising him [Biden], I’d try to make fun of Trump,” Republican former Vice President Dan Quayle said in an interview. “Try to ridicule him. That will get him mad.”
However deft Biden’s prepared lines may be, there are two reasons they may not matter when the votes are counted. One of the cleverest lines spoken in a debate came in 1988, when Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen skewered Quayle by challenging any pretensions Quayle might have had to be another John F. Kennedy.
“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen said.
“It was a good line, and he landed it, but did it make any difference?” Quayle said. “We won 40 states in an electoral landslide.”
Then there’s a more basic question. Is Biden nimble enough to spot the right moment and deliver the line with the needed clarity? For that matter, is Trump? Both men have stumbled over names, places and dates in their speeches.
“I don’t have any doubt that he [Biden] is going to walk in there with a good deal of ammunition,” Carville said. “Can he shoot straight? It’s one thing to have ammunition; it’s another thing to hit the f—— target.”
