What was Biden’s biggest mistake? Getting up to speak.
Nerd prom, as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been called, has always been about as awkward as it sounds. Most politicians aren’t naturally good at comedy (ironically Trump, who has Borsch Belt insult comic timing never actually attended or spoke while in the White House) and their speechwriters aren’t naturally attuned to writing the kind of lines that would actually earn laughs.
But Biden, a shambling wrecking of a man capable of only giving one speech, is a particularly poor fit.
Biden has never been funny and everything funny about him is now an unintentional performance. That held true at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner where his speechwriters tried to play to his strengths. Unfortunately, he has none. Between whatever speech problems he has (or supposedly has), his age, mental condition and inability to read a teleprompter, all they had to work with were the same cheap shots.
And he could barely get through those.
The lines matter less than how you deliver them. Consider Reagan’s famous debate line in 1984, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
It was a perfectly nice low-key Will Rogers line that shouldn’t have gotten more than a nod, but what made it work is how Reagan delivered it. During a campaign where many accused Reagan of fading, he showed that he was still on the ball. He had the timing and the mental agility to pivot effectively.
What did Biden show at the WHCD? That he faded a while back. Instead, Biden rambled, fumbled even his bad applause lines, and underperformed the existing low expectations at an event almost entirely filled with his political base.
What was Biden’s biggest mistake? Getting up to speak.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
