By promising a more aggressive approach in next week’s debate, Joe Biden is setting himself up for a potential Tim Pawlenty moment if he doesn’t effectively follow through.
For those who need a reminder, Pawlenty was a governor of Minnesota who ran a failed bid for the 2012 Republican nomination. From the get-go, he was hindered by the perception that he was too boring and too much of a nice Midwesterner to survive the brutal world of presidential politics. Seeking to disabuse people of this perception, he used the run up to a summer 2011 debate as an opportunity to attack Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare law that provided the model for Obamacare. In interviews leading up to the debate, he deployed the phrase “Obamneycare” and talked about his sharp elbows from playing hockey. Everything was teed up for Pawlenty to swing at Romney’s biggest vulnerability. Yet when he was given the opportunity to challenge Romney on the debate stage, he totally bungled it. He didn’t merely wiff, he backed off his attack altogether. Pawlenty wouldn’t formally drop out of the race until August, but effectively, his chances were doomed once he blew his chance in the June debate.
Now, it should be said, that as the front-runner, Biden is in a much different position than Pawlenty, who was trailing Romney. But there is a similar dynamic operating here. In the first debate, Biden got mauled by Sen. Kamala Harris on the issue of busing. He may have had a defensible position on the merits. In fact, Harris herself more or less adopted his position after the debate. But Biden seemed weak, unprepared, slow on his feet, and, frankly, old.
Yet this week, he promised supporters, “I’m not going to be as polite this time.” Leaving no doubt he was talking about Harris, he said, “Because this is the same person who asked me to come to California and nominate her in her convention.”
This could work out if a more energized Biden appears on stage next week to forcefully defend his record and effectively counter Harris and any other candidate who comes after him. But after such a promise, if he has another feeble performance, it could no longer be excused as him maybe trying to play nice in the first debate, or being somehow off guard by the ferociousness of the attack so early in the campaign. It will be inescapable that he simply isn’t up to the task of running for president, and his supporters and donors will likely lose faith in his ability to beat President Trump, which right now is the central argument for his candidacy.
