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For Presidential debate, believe their deeds, not their words [1]

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Date: 2024-06-23  

The entrance to the National Archives sports the phrase: "What is past is prologue." Social psychologists have an alternative version, "the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior."

For the upcoming Presidential debate, you are advised to place more weight on what each candidate actually did while in office rather than on what they say their future policies will be when trying to predict their actual future policies. Some of the disconnects between deeds and words are reviewed below.

TFG is suddenly solicitous of Black and Brown voters. The Former Guy (TFG) recently visited the South Bronx to meet with supporters who were predominantly Black and Brown. He used the occasion to bash President Biden's economic and border policies, claiming that Black and Brown U.S. citizens were economic victims of President Biden's policies and that TFG's policies would benefit them. The evidence shows that most of the growth in their real wages during TFG's administration occurred in 2017, before he had implemented his economic policies and hence are more attributable to Obama-era policies. TFG's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 widened the racial wealth gap as Black and Latino households received much smaller benefits from the tax cuts than Whites. TFG has promised to extend these unfair tax policies if he is re-elected. His sudden embrace of people of color belies his gratuitous "birther" insinuations targeting President Obama and Vice President Harris, belies his support for "very fine people on both sides" when referring to neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, belies his characterization of El Salvador, Haiti and Black-led African countries as "shithole countries" and belies his frequent diatribes against big cities with sizeable Black populations as "rat-infested" and "crime-ridden."

TFG is suddenly more nuanced on immigration. After years of non-stop bashing of all immigrants, TFG's views on immigration are suddenly more nuanced. Just this past week he startled the world by saying that all foreign students graduating from a high-ranking U.S. university should be automatically issued green cards, thereby permitting them to compete with U.S.-born students for U.S. jobs. This new position on immigration policies conveniently pleases high-tech billionaires whose businesses are dependent on high-achieving immigrant employees to create new (profitable) high-tech products but flies in the face of TFG’s longstanding efforts to end President Obama's DACA program. His continued reliance on arch-anti-immigrant advisers Steven Miller and Peter Navarro for policy advice also suggests skepticism about TFG's sudden conversion to promoting the immigration of 1 million foreign students attending U.S. colleges each year.

TFG has recently become less enthusiastic about Congress enacting a national ban on all abortions. For years, TFG has crowed about his success in stacking the Supreme Court with anti-abortion justices, which resulted in SCOTUS overturning the 49-year constitutional right of every woman to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term or not, leaving it up to (mostly male) state legislators to regulate abortions. TFG had subsequently expressed support for a 15-week national ban on abortions even if it meant overruling states' rights to regulate abortions. Now that election season is upon us and given the persistent public support for a woman's right to control her own body, TFG is walking back his support for a national ban, saying that banning abortions should be left to the states' elected officials to decide. This more nuanced approach to abortion care has little hope of being sustained in a future TFG administration, however, given that he has promised to continue stacking the courts with hardline anti-abortionists and to continue supporting the election of hardline anti-abortionists to Congress.

TFG will pivot to standard campaign talking points when asked questions requiring nuanced answers. The upcoming presidential debate is still informative even if the candidates' words cannot be trusted as indicators of their respective future policies. The capacity of the candidates to think on their feet without advisers at their side or notes on teleprompters will be on display. TFG, who famously had little patience for detailed national security briefings, has stayed true to form by eschewing mock debates and settling for informal "policy discussions" with aides. President Biden, on the other hand, has set aside significant time to study briefing books and to engage in debate practice sessions with advisers simulating typical responses (and provocations) that TFG is expected to make. Both candidates have been flubbing the names of other political leaders and confusing temporally or geographically the countries that the political leaders represented. The contrast that I expect to see between the two candidates is thematic coherence and responsiveness to the moderators' questions. TFG can be trusted to trot out his standard campaign talking points whenever he can, even if they fail to be responsive to the moderators’ questions. If the moderators persist in asking for something other than standard campaign talking points from TFG to their questions, he will either blow up and call their questions stupid or launch into a word salad that will be difficult for anyone to make sense of. President Biden may show confusion about a name, a time or a place but his answers will be coherent. TFG's campaign talking points will reassure his predominantly male, white non-college educated base and President Biden's coherent answers will reassure his predominantly female, college-educated base. The only real change in voter perceptions that this "debate" is likely to stimulate is the realization by independents that President Biden's brain is far from the level of senility that Trump has claimed for President Biden from the very beginning (more than 3 years ago) of President Biden's administration. TFG is now as old as President Biden was when he won the last Presidential election and more visibly in cognitive decline than Biden was at this age. This debate will therefore be a win for President Biden, with independents shifting in his favor.

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