With Thursday's presidential debate looming, the Biden campaign has settled on a strategy: Attempt to exceed expectations.
Oddly enough, that doesn't have anything to do with policy. Instead, the president's handlers are setting the stage for an "energized" Biden who can put down all the talk about his ongoing struggle with senility. More oddly, they seem rather confident he can pull it off.
They're playing with fire, though.
I do not doubt that there's a plan in place to load Biden up with more amphetamines than a Los Angeles drug dealer. We allegedly saw what that looked like during the most recent State of the Union.
Admittedly, I'm not able to drug test Biden to be sure, but you could tell he was on something. He started his speech at the speed of light, barking lines like a cracked-out chihuahua. Certainly, he was "energized," but there are downsides to that approach. One of them is the president being so hyped up that he can't deliver his lines properly.
Then there's the anger. When Biden is "energized," that tends to manifest in him shouting and appearing extremely unstable. Naturally, or better yet, unnaturally, that also leads to him screwing up his teleprompter reading in between screams.
That wasn't the only side-effect, though. About 30 minutes into that State of the Union, Biden began to crash. His speech got more labored and he began to slur at times. He also became increasingly unhinged, even attempting to heckle the audience in an extremely awkward scene that didn't appear pre-planned by his handlers. By the end, the same old tired and declining Biden was on full display.
Will the debate be different? It's possible the numerous commercial breaks (which are not normal for a presidential debate) will help him. It's also possible that being in a controlled studio environment will mask some of the issues, especially if he's allowed to sit down. Still, it's hard to imagine that Biden is going to show up and pitch a perfect game. If Trump lets him, Biden will highlight his own deficiencies.
In other words, while the drug cocktail team is no doubt treating this as their Super Bowl, they can't escape the realities of basic human physiology. Biden is senile, and jacking him up is always a temporary and imprecise procedure. Will he be "energized" on Thursday? I'm fairly confident he will be. Will that lead to him appearing normal and coherent? I'm much less confident on that front.