There were many questions at President Biden’s nearly hourlong news conference on Thursday night — questions about Gaza, Ukraine, the campaign, his health, his record.
But at its heart there was only one question: Could he do it?
That is, could Mr. Biden, who stunned viewers and his party and George Clooney with a doddering performance at the first presidential debate two weeks ago, stand and deliver? Could he be coherent? Could he dispel the talk of age and frailty and decline? Could he beat the doubters who want him to step down from the ticket? Could he look like a winner?
On a national TV stage, Mr. Biden answered the individual questions, often comfortably, sometimes defensively, with depth and engagement and flashes of passion. As for the uber-question, the answer was incomplete. He was not the uncomfortable, lost presence of the debate, but he didn’t erase the memory of that version of himself either. He came across as the president he wants to be, but not necessarily the candidate his critics have said he needs to be.
Presidential news conferences are rarely must-see TV. But the stakes — heightened by reports that some Democrats were waiting for it before weighing in on whether Mr. Biden should remain the nominee — gave this one the air of a test, if not a last stand.
The telecast had the daredevil feel of a live walk through a minefield. The first false step came before the news conference proper, at remarks after the afternoon’s NATO meeting, when Mr. Biden introduced President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine: “Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.”
The president caught himself and recovered. “I’m better,” Mr. Zelensky joked; “You’re a hell of a lot better,” Mr. Biden said. The audience laughed. Anybody can mix up a name once.
Mr. Biden did it twice. Answering his first question of the evening, about whether he believed Vice President Kamala Harris would make a good presidential candidate, he said he “wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president“ if he didn’t. This time he didn’t catch himself.
Now, I doubt even Mr. Biden’s toughest critic believes that he actually thinks that Kamala Harris is Donald Trump or that Volodymyr Zelensky is Vladimir Putin. But this was what he managed when he knew he was under maximum scrutiny, when it was more important than usual not to call world leaders by the names of their mortal enemies or field-promote his opponent to his second-in-command. If he was trying to dissuade his party from seeing him as a jack-in-the-box from which a horror might pop out at an inopportune TV moment, this was not a good start.
Mr. Biden’s precariousness as a candidate made the whole event a meta affair. It was a news conference, but it was not really about imparting any particular information. The occasion was a NATO summit, but the president could have been asked to cite baseball statistics or to name the moons of Jupiter. How he answered was the answer. The conference was the news. Mr. Biden was the medium and the (still-imperfect) messenger.
His voice was thin, as it had been at the debate. He had a cough, and his sentences often rambled and trailed off with a wan “ … anyway.” None of this made him less knowledgeable about foreign policy and alliances, which he seemed especially at ease discussing, or less passionate railing against Mr. Trump and vowing to defend democracy. The substance was there. But the style, on which Mr. Biden’s candidacy was being judged, was still, look … anyway.
If Mr. Biden’s tongue was not always an asset, though, the setting was. A presidential conference is a more flattering frame for him than a debate stage. The president is the singular center of attention, elevated above the reporters, choosing among them, in control. He is not interrupted or on a clock. Mr. Biden seemed in his element, relishing stories about world leaders and his father’s kitchen table, comfortable in the being-president part of being president.
The running-for-president part was still an issue. Mr. Biden won an election whose events were curtailed by 2020 Covid restrictions. Unlike his predecessor, he did not campaign for office as a TV performer. In many ways that was his selling point: Elect him, and you could turn off cable news and stop looking at your phone alerts for a while. The whole raucous, enervating national soap opera would shut off.
Now Mr. Biden is the star of the white-knuckle drama of the summer. It began with the debate, continued through a defensive interview with George Stephanopoulos and a defiant call-in to “Morning Joe,” and it promises a new installment on Monday with Lester Holt (counterprogramming the first night of the Republican National Convention).
But it is not the kind of TV you want to star in as a candidate. Mr. Biden’s debate performance created a context in which the theme of every unscripted appearance is now, “What could go wrong this time?” So far he has survived. But each time, he is like a game-show contestant going double-or-nothing on the brink of elimination.
He made it through another round. The show goes on. We still await the final answer.
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