Stumbling but Defiant Biden Survives Press Conference

President Biden’s first solo press conference this year was a mix of forceful defiance and head-scratching non-sequiturs, a metaphor perhaps for his presidency. After a disastrous June 27 debate performance against Trump, it was billed as a make-or-break moment. And yet, in a little less than an hour, he may have done just enough to survive.

Democrats were openly despairing that the octogenarian would endanger not only the White House but their chances in races down-ballot across the country. The Biden answer: Judge me by my accomplishments, not my verbal performance. “If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said at the end of a three-day NATO meeting marking the 75th anniversary of the alliance, “but there’s no indication of that yet, none.”

Teleprompters flanked the lectern when Biden walked onstage, and he read prepared remarks to defend his foreign policy vision and tout an American economy on the rise. Then those teleprompters were electronically lowered, descending out of view of the president, and he met the press on his own. The task before him was to calm fears as much as it was to throttle dissent.

Biden is not stepping aside because he believes he is “the most qualified person to run for president.” He beat former President Trump once, he vowed, “and I will beat him again.”

He is not overly concerned with the Chicken Little routine on Capitol Hill because “the idea that senators and congressmen running for office worry about the ticket is not unusual.” Nor are his sights solely set on winning. He has a second-term agenda in mind. “I'm not in this for my legacy,” he said. “I'm in this to complete the job I started.”

And in this way the beleaguered president survived a press conference. Alternately whispering and at one point yelling, he didn’t hit anything close to a home run. He didn’t entirely strike out, either. Instead, Biden attempted to meet the scrutiny of the current moment when Democrats, who once whispered their fears about his mental acuity, now openly speculate about whether he can win the election, let alone do the work required of a president.

Not everyone was convinced. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, released a statement moments after the presser wrapped up praising the president’s record in office but calling on him to step aside nonetheless.

One news conference is not likely to preserve his presidency. Biden will face regular tests from now until November. Indignities, too: The oldest president in U.S. history was asked about his bedtime routine, specifically reporting that he has admitted in private that he needs to get more sleep. In prime-time remarks carried live by every broadcast and cable network, Biden litigated his schedule.

Reporting that said he needed to be in bed by 8 p.m. “was not true,” he said. Instead, rather than working until midnight, he explained, it might make more sense for him to start and end his day earlier. Regardless, the president insisted, he has been going “full bore.”

“I love my staff, but they add things. They add things all the time at the very end,” Biden said of his schedule. “I'm catching hell from my wife for that.”

A lingering cold plus jet lag has been the enduring White House explanation for his poor showing at the debate. Biden had to offer another explanation on his feet earlier in the day when he called Ukrainian President Zelensky “President Putin.” There were audible gasps from the audience of assembled world leaders and the assembled media. “President Putin? We’re going to beat President Putin,” Biden said, attempting a recovery. “President Zelensky. I’m so focused on beating Putin.”

Ukraine’s president grimaced, shook his head, and said jokingly, “I’m better.” His American counterpart replied, “You are a hell of a lot better.”

It was another example of the fear Democrats experience daily. “We collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question,” George Clooney, the movie star and Democratic donor, wrote in a New York Times op-ed only one day earlier.

Republicans have another fear. They worry that Biden will self-destruct so quickly that they won’t have the chance to steamroll him. They would rather run against a weak president than an unknown alternative, a source close to the presumptive nominee confirmed to RealClearPolitics after the press conference wrapped. Their assessment late Thursday evening was that Biden had done just enough in prime time to limp along until the November election.

Biden made clear that he will not step aside for Vice President Harris, though he praised her as “a hell of a prosecutor” before entering national politics and heralded “the way she's handled the issue of freedom of women's bodies.”

Would he step aside if his campaign could demonstrate that Harris had a better chance of defeating Trump, a man Biden describes as an existential threat to democracy itself? “No,” he replied, “unless they came back and said there's no way you can win, me. No one's saying that. No poll says that.”

This bit of defiance, though clarifying, came just after he called Harris “Vice President Trump.”

He cracked the door open to a challenge at the convention, saying that delegates were “free to do whatever they want.” He seemed to tie his fate to the democratic process, even as his campaign has done nearly everything possible to smother challengers either during the primary or afterward.

More than anything, Biden cast himself as an inevitability. “If all of a sudden, I show up at the convention, everybody says we want somebody else, that's the democratic process,” he said, before quickly adding that such a possibility “is not going to happen.” He misspeaks. He’d like to go to bed earlier. He can also sometimes rise to the occasion and defend his record. Democrats, Biden was saying, are stuck with him, gaffes and all.