Biden’s campaign has become a series of competency tests and reality checks after Stephanopoulos interview

The big question on everyone’s mind for the last few days is this: Will President Joe Biden successfully jump the hurdle that is his interview tonight with ABC’s George Stephanopolous, and make all Democrats stop panicking?

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The answer is no — but that’s subjective. People see what they want, including Biden. Except, when Stephanopolous asked him if he’d seen the debate, it sounded like Biden didn’t remember, “Don’t think I did, no,” he wavered. You either remember or you don’t.

Biden also sounded hoarse, and halting at times. He seemed forced and messaged up to the hilt. He didn’t answer the questions directly, mostly he responded to questions by listing his accomplishments — which are impressive. He definitely understands what’s right for this country. But there were moments of awkward hesitation. And he just seemed so tired. Very tired.

But it gets worse. Our president is in deep denial. There’s one thing about having fortitude, but rejecting the polls, the approval rating, and the state of the race was worrisome. He seems far away from reality. And if that’s the case, how can he speak honestly about his competency?

When Stephanopolous asked him about how he’d feel in January if he lost to Trump, the answer was oddly about him, not about the danger to the country — that was startling.

Biden also made sure he came with a tan. If you have followed Biden over the years, you know he likes the sun. He certainly thinks it makes him appear more youthful. But not tonight. I don’t think he did anything in 22 minutes to stop the bleeding of those Democrats who want to move forward without him.

So what does this all mean? After tonight, how many more media appearances will it take to assure us that he’s not declining? And in doing so, will we make each of these hurdles the news of the day or week, blocking discussions about the economy, and more urgently the dangers of former President Donald Trump?

Will every forthcoming interview or speech or news conference or press gaggle be put under a microscope, analyzed by pundits and geriatricians, watching for any signs that Biden is deteriorating? Or detached from reality?

It used to be a sport to watch Biden’s infamous gaffes as he spared, cajoled, or bored the media. In fact, many in Congress complained about how Biden was always talking. He was lamented because he talked to the media so much — in his own gaffe-prone language, off the cuff, and without guardrails. During those days, you can be sure that Biden never loved a teleprompter.

At some point, those gaffes turned into alarm bells about his age, and I think that happened about a year after he was elected president. Those miscues weren’t funny anymore. As a result, guardrails were put up all around him. The media became a no-no.

Peter Baker in the New York Times today pointed out that Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos was an “unusual instance” of Biden, since he’s been president, “subjecting himself to extended questions from the traditional news media.”

Baker cited statistics compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar, an emeritus professor from Towson State University who has studied White House communications for many years that showed Biden had given 128 interviews, fewer than half as many as his two immediate predecessors,

Further, Baker said that Biden had not given a single interview with the six largest national daily newspapers in the U.S. Finally, Baker pointed out that Biden had done only 36 news conferences thus far, fewer than any president besides Ronald Reagan at similar points in their presidencies.

This matters because as the campaign wears on, it’s going to be imperative that Biden make himself more available, not only to communicate what he wants to accomplish in his second term, but — and here we go again — to prove that he’s competent. And there’s a worry that instead of reporting on what Biden has to say, the media will be obsessing about the way Biden said what he said. Was he coherent enough? Was he in denial?

At the same time, there’s also been a lot of complaints about how the media has treated Biden since the debate, and that journalists were more focused on talking about Biden’s performance, than they were in calling out the plethora of Trump lies. For once, Trump didn’t hog the spotlight or media coverage, much to the detriment of Biden.

To the media, Trump being a liar, a criminal, a cheat — and again, a liar — is baked in. Over the last nine years, he’s hogged millions of miles of airtime and column space. Everyone in the world knows who Donald Trump is. It’s Trump 24/7, 365, over and over and over again.

Biden falling apart before our eyes — if he is or isn’t is beside the point — is another way for the media to get ratings and clicks, and move a salacious story away from Trump. Complain all you want, but when you see a story about Biden tripping or falling for example, what’s the first thing you do?

This brings up another complaint: The media has been complicit in hiding Biden’s decline. They're damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they do focus on Biden’s age — as they are now, do they risk making Trump look like a better option because he appears to be the candidate with more stamina? As a public relations veteran, it’s all about perception.

I recently spoke with Ramin Setoodeh, the author of Apprentice in Wonderland, which chronicles Donald Trump’s years as a reality TV star on The Apprentice. He told me something very consequential. Donald Trump and his convulsion with perception. “He is using the media as a reality star. He is looking at the tropes of reality TV. He knows how to engage people. He knows how to hold their attention, and it is a force that the Democrats will need to be aware of as we're heading into the election, because he is not a traditional politician.”

Setoodeh is right, and against this backdrop is Biden, who more than any other candidate before him perhaps, must find a way to engage the media in a way that lessens the potency of Trump.

Look at the debate. Trump’s performance — and it was performative — made Biden’s frailty all the more obvious. In the next debate — if there is one between Biden and Trump — the president not only needs to have command of his facts and messages, he also needs to exude a commanding presence.

We’ve wasted one week talking about Biden’s debate performance, and as we head into this long weekend, the media will start to slice and dice every aspect of Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos. And because it’s a holiday weekend, on Monday, when regular programming and campaign press coverage resumes, we’ll be listening to more fallout about Biden’s latest hurdle. Did he pass? Did he fail? Should he stay in the race? Should he leave?

And finally, the one question that takes us into the next media cycle is, “What is Biden’s next test?

Here we go again.

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