The only political blog I will write all year - 2024 edition

This isn't a political post, although it may sound like one. Every US Presidential election, I weigh in on how people communicate - because I like to think that I know a thing or two about crisis communications skills, having taught them to roughly 35,000 people over the years. 

This time around is a special Joe Biden edition, because of recent events (and because Trump is, well, Trump). Earlier this month, President Biden had a disastrous July debate where he was rambling, incoherent, and confused. Voters and Democratic officials alike were stunned and concerned. And last Friday, a little over a week later, he did an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos to try and repair the damage.

Sadly, if Biden thinks his evasive, defensive interview helped his cause, he needs to think again. Here are just three examples of the many things he blew it on:

1. Gaslighting. George Stephanopoulos put a lot of legitimate concerns on the table, and Biden simply dismissed all of them - like being behind in the polls ("I don't buy that"), his low approval ratings ("Woah, whoa, woah"), whether he will step down if senior Democrats insist ("They're not gonna do that"), what if his allies reliably tell him he is going to lose the House and the Senate in November by staying in ("I'm not gonna answer that question") and more.

What he SHOULD have done is what I've taught practically Every Call Center Agent On the Face of the Earth to do: ACKNOWLEDGE the concerns FIRST, to show that he hears and gets them, THEN make his pitch. For example, "I agree that the poll trends look worrisome to a lot of people. Here's what I think is happening here ... (post-debate slump, etc.) ... here is what I am planning to do ... and here is what I think will happen from here."

2. Minimizing. He referred to last week's fiasco as a "bad night" and a "little debate." I teach people to defuse conflict by AMPLIFYING other people's concerns, which gives you credibility. Minimizing them is like throwing chum to the sharks. And in this case, Biden came across like he was trying to make the Hindenburg disaster sound like a fender-bender. It didn't work. 

3. The cognitive question. Ultimately, the whole point of this interview was to show the American people - after the previous week's train wreck - that we're not about to elect a President who will constantly need his diaper changed. But when asked the obvious question about whether he would take a cognitive test and share the results, he made one evasive statement after another, versus even an honest "no." ("No one said I had to" ... "Watch me" ... "I've already done it.") In the process, he succeeded in sounding exactly like every six-year-old trying to talk his way out of getting punished by Mom and Dad.

Of course, the only real answer would be to have that cognitive test. As noted pollster Nate Silver put it, not doing so was "disqualifying on its own." But at the very least he should have played back the voters' concerns first ("I can see where a cognitive test would reassure people after seeing that horrible debate") and then given his justification ("In this political environment, medical results get twisted and misused" ... "We're stigmatizing other people in this position" ... or whatever.)

So should Biden step down? I have my opinions, but ultimately smarter people than me will need to figure that one out. In the meantime, if Biden's goal was to come across like your defensive Uncle Ernie who denies everything, acknowledges nothing, and is impossible to talk to, he did a bang-up job.