All electoral politics are an exercise in theater. But the moment that confronts the Joe Biden campaign is unique in just how large the stage is and how consequential the action.
The presidential candidate who just two weeks ago appeared on life support now finds himself in a situation that is as advantageous as it is delicate. He will likely be the Democratic nominee. But any overt steps to assume the mantle risk coming off as presumptuous, which would offend Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his supporters and, by extension, hurt his chances in the general. At the same time, the unfolding catastrophe around the spread of the coronavirus has created the type of leadership vacuum ripe for a former vice president to fill.
Much of that vacuum is owed to the fact that the pandemic is an especially difficult challenge for President Donald Trump. It requires bureaucratic acumen, a respect for science, and a lengthy record of accountability and credibility. Trump suffers on all of these fronts. He has consistently downplayed the severity of the virus, overstated the capacity of the government to handle it, and offered far-too-rosy prognostications about its economic impact.
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The pandemic is also not the type of thing that can be stage-managed, which is one of Trump’s major gifts. To dispel stigmas during the height of the Ebola outbreak, former President Barack Obama embraced a nurse who treated infected patients and became sick herself. And during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, Obama got a flu shot to show people how safe it is. It’s been suggested that Trump do the same sort of thing. After being questioned for days about why he wasn’t getting tested for the virus, Trump finally relented on Saturday and said he’d submitted to an exam. The results came back negative, but it’s unclear what, if any, broader message the entire exercise will send.
President Barack Obama hugs Dallas nurse Nina Pham at the Oval Office.
Reuters“The real issue is not that Americans won't get tested. It is that they can’t,” said Leslie Dach, who helped manage the response to the Ebola outbreak at the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services. “This president should take care of his health and should follow the doctors’ recommendation.”
Biden can’t make those gestures either. But he can project a style of leadership that can contrast to Trump’s. His speech on Thursday laying out how he would respond to the outbreak—through a mix of overwhelming federal resources, strategic strengthening of the social safety net, and unity between parties as well as government and private industry—was meant to do just that. And it worked. He presented himself as a president in action, not one in waiting.
If there is a script for this moment it’s one Biden surely is familiar with. In the fall of 2008, the financial markets were imploding amid the presidential election. And then, like now, the White House occupant seemed wholly incapable of the task at hand.
Biden was serving as both a senator of Delaware and Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee when it suddenly became apparent that they’d have to play a role in the negotiations around what became known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The first lesson the Obama campaign learned was that overly dramatic gestures don’t always sell. Indeed, sometimes they backfire. Obama had initially been sold on the idea that he and his opponent, then-Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), should put out a joint statement of principles about the financial crisis so that neither of them would suffer more political backlash than the other. But McCain instead proposed that they suspend their campaigns and head to D.C. to work on a solution. Before Obama could get back to him with a response, McCain announced that he was doing it anyway. The move made him appear erratic.
The second lesson was to have a plan. In addition to suspending his campaign, McCain also asked the Bush White House to call for a meeting with the president, his top aides, congressional leaders, and Obama. The White House acquiesced. But during the gathering, McCain barely spoke—a moment of bizarre reticence that quickly leaked to the press.
After the meeting, Obama reportedly told his team: “Guys, I’m just telling you, based on what I just saw, we’d better win this election or this country is screwed.” One Obama vet later told me: “I’m pretty sure he said ‘fucked.’”
The political parallels between the fall of 2008 and now aren’t perfect. For one, George W. Bush was a lame-duck president while Trump is seeking re-election. Secondly, Bush was sidelined strategically by his team (since Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was a far less politically toxic negotiating partner to members of Congress), while Trump seems preternaturally drawn towards making himself the center of the current drama. Most importantly, the problems are manifestly different: an economic collapse that required capital injection into the markets and homeowner relief is nothing like a biomedical emergency that could lead to thousands, if not millions dead.
But on a political level, the similarities are there. David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist at the time, said he was getting some flashbacks watching Congress put together an emergency economic package to respond to the coronavirus. And Bill Burton, a top communications official on the campaign, argued that the role Biden was playing now was reminiscent of how Obama was forced to maneuver as the stock market crashed around his own presidential candidacy.
“You’ve got a challenger who is running against an incumbent party and leader who very clearly is not recognizing the crisis for what it is,” said Burton. “And then, like now, what you basically need to do is show what competent leadership looks like and demonstrate steadiness and credibility. That can be enough to undercut the fundamental message of your opponent.”
But it is not all opportunity ahead for Biden. There are risks, too. He’s not yet through the Democratic primary and has to contend with debates and elections and the likelihood that the supporters of Sanders aren’t simply going to get behind him because he is now stage-acting as president.
“The one thing not to do is be heavy-handed or stick surrogates on him and his supporters to hurry up and fall in line. That will only be counterproductive,” said Brian Fallon, who as press secretary to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign had a front-row seat to the difficulties in patching up a divisive primary with Bernie and his supporters. “The Biden folks realize they have to find olive branch opportunities where they can try and make some inroads to deal with the very striking generational gap in the Democratic primary electorate.”
But there are also risks that can be run with respect to how he is interacting with Trump. Obama, during the crafting of TARP, was critical of Bush but not antagonistic. Part of it was because Bush had been sidelined at that juncture. But part of it was also a calculation that, in an emergency, voters value tranquility more than partisanship and that in order for him to look presidential he needed to show deference to the actual president. That may have been overly cautious. But it ended up working. Obama was elected. Veterans of that ‘08 campaign say Biden would be wise to do the same.
“The challenge is how do you stay visible at a time when they are not doing events,” said Ken Baer, a former Obama aide and Democratic speechwriter and adviser. “Also, and this is something I believe he and his people take seriously, is there is only so far you should go in your criticisms. When you’re in a national crisis there is only so much you should pile on. It’s old fashion. But he is old-fashioned.”
