Biden wasn’t my favorite candidate (that was Warren), but just a couple of days before my turn came to vote (March 3, in Virginia) I saw it was Joe we needed to nominate. Which made it especially painful when I watched Biden speaking on the eve of his Super-Tuesday victory— painful to see “my guy” delivering such a poor performance of the usual kind of political rhetoric.
I decided that I’d write a piece — in the very slight chance someone might call it to his attention — advising him to stop trying to speak to the nation in the mode he does poorly and to focus instead on the kind of speaking he does well.
“Stop shouting to us.” Which is what he does poorly. “Talk to us, person-to-person, instead.” That is what, in essence, I was going to say. “Slow and conversational, like we’ve all settled in together. Not speeded up with rhetorical intensity.”
His shouting-mode is where he stumbles, stammers, and slurs his words most. And worse, it feels artificial. Like not his true self. And Biden’s “true self” is his biggest selling point.
If Biden is going to beat Trump — and I bet he will, and perhaps beat him badly — it will be through showing America that he is decent, humane, caring, compassionate, trustworthy (as well as basically competent to make government work for the people).
He conveys those qualities far better in an FDR “Fireside chat” kind of intimate conversational mode than in a JFK “torch is passed to a new generation” mode. When he talks to us, all his virtues come through, and we sense that he is in good — or good enough — command of the flow of his words.
But I’d not written that piece by last Tuesday, and when I saw Biden’s speech in the wake of his new batch of victories that night (after his big victories in Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan), I saw that Biden (and his people) had apparently reached that same conclusion themselves.
Biden’s speech on Tuesday was effective, even somewhat moving, as he spoke in a conversational way about how we can make America America again, restoring leadership that represents our nation’s basic values.
On the few occasions when he upped the volume, it was an effective way of providing emphasis, of showing the intensity of his feeling about the stakes in this election, and his strong determination that we will prevail.
I felt very relieved, believing that the Biden team has figured out how to emphasize Biden’s strengths as a communicator and stop putting his shortcomings as an orator on such prominent display.
This Sunday’s debate with Sanders is probably the final occasion that has even a slight potential to change the dynamics of the Democratic race for the nomination. It remains to be seen if Sanders intends to use this debate to derail Biden, or if his intention is to move Biden into greater alignment with Sanders on the issues.
But which ever it is, even if Biden will be challenged to deal extemporaneously with the substance, I hope he will keep his pace slow and his manner more intimate and conversational.
I’m more optimistic right now than I’ve been for a while about the question that has been my pre-occupation in almost everything I’ve been writing for months: Will we succeed in wresting the powers of the presidency from this most dangerous, unfit, lawless President, Donald Trump?
I believe Biden — with the help of a substantial majority of the American people — will do it.