The United States is a power with exceptional resources, a diverse population and a wealth of skills. Yet the country is gearing up for a depressing presidential election, a default choice whose impact will be global. On the right is Donald Trump, a candidate who was criminally convicted and responsible for an attempted coup, after his defeat in 2020. On the left is incumbent President Joe Biden, whose voice sometimes becomes a thin thread and whose every step is an uncertain adventure. While both camps are buzzing with excitement, their first televised confrontation on CNN, in Atlanta on Thursday, June 27, will mark an entry into the campaign for many Americans. Reluctantly.
The very format of the debate is sending the country back to 1960, when then senator John F. Kennedy and then vice president Richard Nixon faced off. What makes it so special is its lack of an audience. The Biden team set this condition. It will be "a sterile, dead room," according to Trump in the Washington Examiner.
The exercise will last 90 minutes, interspersed with two commercial breaks. Candidates won't be allowed to have notes. Only two journalists, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, will face them, and they will be able to cut off their microphones in the event of untimely interruptions. They are already under attack from the Trump camp for their supposed bias, a way of cushioning a possible half-hearted performance by their leader.
Biden prepared in secret at Camp David with, in particular, his former chief of staff, Ron Klain, and adviser Mike Donilon. His preferred angles of attack should be the defense of reproductive rights, exactly two years after the end of the Roe vs Wade ruling decided by the Supreme Court, which since 1973 has guaranteed the right to abortion throughout the territory, and the existential threat to American democracy posed by Trump – who has been criminally convicted and is still indicted in three other cases.
Trump intends to portray a supposedly decadent America that has been in freefall for the past four years, focusing on inflation and the migrant crisis. On June 22, at a rally in Philadelphia, he pretended to ask his supporters about Biden. "Should I be tough and nasty and just say you're the worst president in history? Or should I be nice and calm and let him speak?"
This fake hesitation, which feeds the idea of a boxing match already seen in 2020, isn't the only unknown. How will the two men approach their respective ages? "Happy 78th birthday, Donald," 81-year-old Biden said in a tweet on June 14, "Take it from one old guy to another: Age is just a number. This election, however, is a choice." Trump, meanwhile, likes to overplay his vitality. "I don't feel 77," he said from Trump Tower on May 31, the day after he was convicted in New York of falsifying accounting documents.
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