Michelle Crowe/CBS News
If anyone can analyze the presidential election upheaval caused by Thursday's debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it's CBS News anchor John Dickerson.
Dickerson is the network's chief political analyst and anchors the streaming show “The Daily Report with John Dickerson.” He has written extensively about the U.S. presidency and contemporary political dynamics as a contributor to The Atlantic magazine and as the author of the 2020 book “The World's Hardest Job: The U.S. Presidency.” Additionally, Dickerson co-hosts the Slate podcasts “Political Gabfest” and “Whistlestop.”
Dickerson has been working overtime since the candidates faced off on June 27, trying to untangle the impact of Biden and Trump's performances in an unusually early debate. He says there is little past precedent to guide how the battle for the White House will play out in 2024 — a sobering admission from someone who knows the terrain well.
“This time around, I don't know what historical parallels to hang on to,” Dickerson said.
With the election still more than four months away, the CNN debate feels like a turning point in an already unusual presidential election cycle. Has a debate performance ever been decisive for voters?
We've never had an environment like this before, but there have been times when performance at major debates has come into question. Two things come to mind. [Ronald] With President Reagan in 1984 [Gerald] Ford in 1976. In 1984, the headlines in major newspapers during Reagan's first debate were similar to the ones I saw on Friday morning after Biden's debate performance, about Reagan's age and basically whether he could ever run for president again. But there were two main differences in that case. One, the debate was in October, so it was very close to the actual election, and Reagan had a 15-16 point lead. In the end, he crushed Biden. [Walter] Mondale. So whatever concerns people had after the first debate, it didn't change the polls much and it didn't change the final result at all.
For years, people have suggested that Reagan's joke in the second debate that he wasn't going to take advantage of his opponent's youth and inexperience somehow changed the course of the game. That's silly: Reagan was already leading by 15 points and went on to win in a modern-day landslide victory.
In 1976, Ford [during the debate] The lack of Soviet control over Eastern Europe was a huge blunder, and was treated as such at the time. It was late in the campaign, and Ford was in a much worse position than the other candidates. [Jimmy] Carter. But there were no calls for Ford to back out or any concerned visits to the White House. It was a gaffe in the debate, and then everyone moved on. It certainly didn't help Ford, but there's no evidence that his debate performance significantly accelerated his campaign's trajectory.
Do you think that will happen this time?
This election is different for all the reasons we talk about in modern elections. We have a very close political race in this country. It's down to six or seven states, and it's going to be very, very close. [the election] It was supposed to be a very close race, but the country was insensitive to change. Something big happened that would have marred a campaign in a previous political era, like a felon becoming a candidate. And [this year] Given the uncertainty of polls and other information, the overall dynamics of the race haven't really changed, as far as we know what the trends are.
It's possible that by next week we'll be fixated on something else, but will the Biden team end up deeply regretting trying to hold this debate so soon?
Political timescales are now extremely short, and everything about the debate exacerbates our unfortunate tendency to try to define the entire world by what happened 10 seconds ago. … It can be translated into a whole range of things that will motivate people to move on. The fact is, there is a partisan divide in this country, and there are many voters who will not change their minds no matter what happens to Joe Biden.
The reason this debate performance is a negative for him is the fact that it's not going to go away. He's not getting any younger. This choice to have the debates early was in itself an effort to dispel this issue — to dispel any doubts about whether he could serve another four years. But it didn't happen. Not only did it not dispel the doubts, it made them greater. So we know that between now and the time the voting is over, the doubts will always be there, and there's always a chance that they'll be answered in the negative.
1968 is the modern benchmark year for measuring political turmoil in the United States. In the midst of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson, challenged in the primaries by his Democratic colleagues Robert Kennedy and Gene McCarthy, stunned the nation by choosing not to run for reelection. Then Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and riots broke out in major cities. How does 2024 compare?
With LBJ, it wasn't the result of any particular triggering event, it was just growing dissatisfaction with the president. There was a war going on that would continue through the rest of the campaign and that was holding him back. He was under attack from the left and the right. … If there was a triggering event, it was the Tet Offensive. [Biden’s] The debate performance was a news event that exacerbated the candidate's potential disadvantage. This is perhaps the closest analogy in that a single event created this problem. [Johnson’s withdrawal] It was a surprise. Nobody was saying, “Oh, Johnson has to go,” right? There was an implicit idea in the candidacy of McCarthy and Kennedy that the incumbent should lose. But what we're experiencing now wasn't. But the question today is, what are we experiencing? Are it just pundits and editorial writers who are basically saying, “Biden has to go”? Or are there real elected officials who are telling Biden, “He has to go”? So far, I haven't seen anyone like that. The usual suspects are on the defensive on this one. So maybe we're just getting a serious reaction from the nonpolitical class, and that's limiting the potential impact to some extent.
After the 1968 and 1972 elections, the country's political position began to change radically.. What do you think is happening now?
Back then, our political system had a lot more room to maneuver, which sometimes doesn't seem like the case now, and back then, everything was happening in the streets and in the lives of Americans. [antiwar] Protests and assassinations followed. January 6th was a historic shock that reminded me of 1968. Think about what happened on January 6th. The House, the Senate, the Vice President, the Republican leadership said that Donald Trump was the culprit of the attack on the Capitol. I can't imagine anything worse. The man who took an oath to defend the Constitution is the culprit of an attack on the constitutional process. You would think that would be the end. In a political system like 1968, this man would have been kicked out of politics. Now all of those who said that Donald Trump was the culprit of the election subversion are supporting him. Mitch McConnell supports Donald Trump. Kevin McCarthy supports Donald Trump. It's insanity, it's far stranger and far more destabilizing to the political process than anything that happened in 1968.
So we have new insecurities. History can stabilize us. Unfortunately, the usual stability that comes from history is not very common. After the January 6 attack, the system came back into force, the people continued to resist, and Congress was finally able to count and approve the votes. [Trump] The administration did the right thing. It's all history, and now the norms have reasserted themselves. This time, I'm not sure what parallels in history to cling to. Whether the norms will assert themselves is still an open question.
