ABOUT LAST NIGHT

In the famous words of Ted Lasso . . .

"Oklahoma!"

President Joe Biden and Donald Trump took to the stage at CNN's studios in Atlanta last night for what was billed as a ninety-minute debate. 

Because their past meetings, largely if not exclusively on account of Trump's incessant bullying and puerile lack of self-control, had degenerated into the political equivalent of a food fight, the network imposed strict rules.  

There was no audience for anyone to play to. Anytime either candidate was not speaking, his microphone was silenced.  Their mics were also silenced whenever either candidate exceeded the time limits imposed for answers and rebuttals.  

Neither candidate was allowed to bring notes or other materials into the proceedings.  

During the two breaks, neither of them could speak to any staff or advisers.

The debate was hosted by two respected journalists, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They only asked questions.  And while they were excellent in demanding actual answers when none were given, they did not fact-check either candidate's responses.

If all of this was designed to restrain Trump, it worked but only to a very limited extent.  

He was stopped from interrupting and talking over anyone, which in the past had literally made the proceedings unintelligible. He was not, however, stopped from lying or from engaging in the mindless word salad that characterizes all of his extemporaneous riffs.

In the aftermath of the debate, CNN's own fact-checker, Daniel Dale, listed Trump's lies.  As Heather Cox Richardson pointed out early this morning in her Letters From An American, it took Dale three minutes to get through the list.

The list of lies was mind-boggling.

As CNN reported, "Trump made more than 30 false claims at the Thursday debate."  His "repeat falsehoods included his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that  every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn't fund terrorist groups during his presidency, that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as 'super predators,' that Biden is planning to quadruple people's taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don't pay the cost of tariffs, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the 2020 election."

Concluding, CNN finished its report by noting that "Trump also added some new false claims, such as his assertions that the U.S. currently has its biggest budget deficit and its biggest trade deficit with China.  Both records occurred under Trump."

As Cox Richardson explained, the lies "went on and on, and that was the point.  This was not a debate.  It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop . . . It's a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious argument, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them.  Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don't know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter." Heather noted that Trump did the same thing to Biden in 2020. Ironically, however, "the lack of muting on the mics" then reduced Biden "to simply saying: 'Will you shut up, man'", while killing the mics last night "made the technique more effective."

Cox Richardson wrote that the Gish gallop can be "combat[ted] . . . by calling it out for what it is." 

I, however, have my doubts. 

Last night, my friend and  high school debate coach wrote that "As a reasonably successful high school debater more than five decades ago, I learned a hard reality. If you are devoted to arguing the facts  and reality and your opponent is willing to employ either false information or misconstrued data against your position, it is almost impossible to win an argument.  The great British linguist and theoretician, Paul Grice, established the rule that, in human communication, we normally expect a speaker to be expressing what is true (the first of the Grecian maxims of communication)."

It is, of course, almost impossible for anyone to go into any interaction with Trump expecting him to tell the truth, and it was not the case that Biden did so last night.  And though Cox Richardson thinks the Gish gallop was effective against Biden because he "retreated to trying to give three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand" rather than calling Trump out, the truth is that Biden often was . . .

Well . . .

Lost.  

So . . .

Oklahoma!

What should we do?

Here's my plan.

First, Joe Biden was bad last night. 

Admit it.  

And because a decent enough number of Americans think he is too old to complete another four years as President and may not have either the mental or physical stamina to do so, those of us who support him must confront this issue head on and refute it.  

Last night, Trump challenged Biden to take a cognitive test.  

We supporters should demand more than that.  

President Biden should publicly commit to immediately undergoing a full medical evaluation by an independent physician that includes tests of his physical stamina and mental acuity. If that evaluation does not clear him for the duty he seeks, he should announce he is not running for reelection and free all the elected delegates to choose a new nominee at the Democratic Party's August convention. 

If the shoe were on the other foot, would Trump or the Republican Party do this?

Not in a hundred years.

But we are different from them.

We aren't the party that is about to nominate a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, pathological liar and coup plotting fascist bent on turning America into a 21st century version of what Germany became in the 1930s.

We are better than them.

They run away from the truth.

We confront it.

At the end of the day, Joe Biden has to be fit for duty.  

This does not mean he must exhibit the energy of a forty-year-old or become a poster child for prevagen.  

Performing as president does not require and is not the work of a soloist. It requires a team.  

One of the major reasons Trump cannot be president is that almost all the competent adults who saved him from himself in his first term have abandoned him this time. The list is long and includes most of his former Cabinet officials, two of his former National Security advisers, one former chief of staff and the former Vice President. The team he intends to put together in 2025 will be a rogue's gallery of sycophants and incompetents and his blueprint for governing will involve retribution, recrimination and revenge.

That is not a problem Biden faces at any level.

His Cabinet is first rate. 

Blinken, Austin, Yellin, Buttigieg, Raimondo, Vilsack, Granholm et al. are all superb.  Vice President Harris is an effective spokesperson, excellent communicator and a fighter. Together, this group is more than able -- and much more able than any group Trump can or  will put together -- to roll up it sleeves and continue to help this old but effective man be the continuing presidential success he has demonstrated he already is.

But first things first.

Oklahoma.