Biden lacked oomph, but the transcript tells a different tale

President Biden obviously did not have a good night in his debate with Donald Trump. The White House claimed he had a cold. His soft voice and bumbling manner played right into the MAGA narrative that he is past his use-by date. The chattering class said it was a disaster for Biden. He even alarmed many Democrats.

But, reading the cold transcript, we get a very different picture of Biden. Substantively, he ably and forcefully made the case that that Trump should not be allowed back in the Oval Office.

While the timbre of Biden’s voice was soft, and he occasionally lost his train of thought, he struck some hard and telling blows. Let’s review the transcript.

On his age: “I spent half my career being criticized being the youngest person in politics. I was the second-youngest person ever elected to the United States Senate. And now I’m the oldest. This guy’s three years younger and a lot less competent. I think that just look at the record. Look what I’ve done. Look how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me.”

On Trump’s character: Trump is legally and morally compromised. He is a convicted felon, and had sex with an adult movie actress while his wife was pregnant. He accosted E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room. It is no answer that Hunter Biden is also a convicted felon. Hunter Biden is not running for president.

On Trump’s place in history: Historians rate Trump the worst president in our 230-year history.

On NATO: Trump wants to get out of NATO. “You’re going to stay in NATO or you’re going to pull out of NATO?” “Our strength lies in our alliances.”

On the Big Lie: “You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time, you continued to appeal and appeal to courts all across the country. Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit, state or local, none … if you lose again, you can’t stand the loss. Something snapped in you when you lost the last time.”

On the economy: Biden inherited from Trump a disastrous economy. Trump increased the federal deficit to the largest in history, with $2 trillion tax cuts for the rich. He had the largest national debt of any president in a four-year period.

“There was no inflation under Trump because the economy was in freefall” at the time of Covid. Trump mishandled the pandemic. There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15 percent. Biden created new jobs.

Trump may say we had the greatest economy in the world on his watch, “but he is the only one who thinks that.” He seeks to impose draconian 10 percent tariffs on imported goods, which would cost the average American $2,500 a year in higher prices.

On abortion: Trump relished his appointments of justices to the Supreme Court who overruled Roe v. Wade and diminished women’s reproductive rights. Biden was eloquent and quite definite when he said: “The idea that the politicians — that the founders wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about women’s health is ridiculous. … No politician should be making that decision.”

On immigration: “We worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement that not only changed all of that.” Trump blocked the bill. “In addition to that, we found ourselves in a situation where, when he was president, he was … separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages, making sure the families were separated.”

“What I’ve done — since I’ve changed the law, what’s happened? I’ve changed it in a way that now you’re in a situation where there are 40 percent fewer people coming across the border illegally. That’s better than when he left office.”

On the military: “Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one. For example, veterans are a hell of a lot better off since I passed the PACT Act. One million of them now have insurance, and their families have it. And their families have it, because what happened, whether was Agent Orange or burn pits, they’re all being covered now. And he — his group opposed that.”

“We’re also in a situation where we have great respect for veterans. I was recently in France for D-Day, and I spoke to all — about those heroes that died. I went to the World War II cemetery — World War I cemetery he refused to go to. He was standing with his four-star general, and he told him — he said, ‘I don’t want to go in there because they’re a bunch of losers and suckers.’ My son who served in Iraq was not a loser. He was not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.”

On Charlottesville: “What American president would ever say, Nazis coming out of fields, carrying torches, singing the same anti-Semitic bile, carrying swastikas, were fine people. This is a guy who says Hitler’s done some good things. I’d like to know what they are. The good things Hitler’s done, that’s what he said. This guy has no sense of American democracy.”

On making America great again: “America is not in decline, it is regarded everywhere as the envy of the world.” This claim is backed up by Pew research.

On Trump’s vow of vengeance: “He does not deny his determination to use the law to revenge himself on his political enemies, using laws to arrest and prosecute them as he wants to use the pardon power to commute the sentences of violent criminals pardon involved in the assault on the Capitol.”

On Trump’s competence: Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, as well as 40 high-ranking officials in the Trump administration refuse to endorse him, and say he is unfit to be president.

Then came Biden’s peroration: “We are the most admired country in the world. We’re the United States of America. There’s nothing beyond our capacity. We have the finest military in the history of the world. The finest in the history of the world. No one thinks we’re weak. No one wants to screw around with us. Nobody. ”

It was Trump who demonstrably lied in the debate, lied with the utmost self-assurance, evaded questioning with irresponsive answers bristling with alternative facts and lame denials. Biden was on message. I only wish he had had more oomph.

My bottom line: Disaster may not be irretrievable. To put it starkly, here’s the deal: Vote for a convicted felon trying to lie his way back into power or vote for someone who has proven he can get the job done. I make no excuses for Biden, but as Adelaide lamented in “Guys and Dolls,” “A person can develop a bad, bad cold.”

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.