June 28, 2024
Tom Collins Martini
Great Falls, Virginia
President Joseph Robinette Biden
The White House
Washington, DC
Sir,
Earlier today, I received a verbatim transcript of last night’s presidential debate between you and Donald John Trump, in the form of a Rich Text computer file. Since your administration has been such a steady and lucrative client for the last three and one half years, upon receiving it, I decided to provide you with some immediate analysis and advice, gratis, rather than wait for your staff to contact me for a paid consultation.
Therefore, I canceled my Friday morning appointments and submitted that file to four of the most powerful artificial intelligence entities currently available on the planet as the subject of an AI prompt directing them to:
1. Fact-check every statement with at least three verifiable sources, footnoting each;
2. Identify every lie; threat; existential, post-hoc, red herring, slippery slope, and causal fallacy; appeal to authority, ignorance, pity, and popular opinion; circular, straw man, ad hominem and tu quoque argument; false dilemma and non-sequitur; and,
3. Produce a version of the transcript with each and every of those items denoted in strikeout font.
While the AI did that, I checked a hard copy of the transcript myself and marked all of those things with a yellow highlighter.
A five-way comparison of the results produced unanimous agreement. When all of that dreck is deleted from the debate, aside from a gratuitous discussion of your golf game, you presented twenty-seven minutes and twelve seconds of meaningful and well reasoned political, economic, financial, scientific and policy content relevant to issues about which every American voter should be concerned, establishing both a definitive record of your administration’s achievements and a clear and inspiring Democratic vision for the future. While some of it was rather garbled, it was all definitely there.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, made a lot of noises for forty-five minutes straight and didn’t say anything: run a command to erase that strikeout text and there is nothing left of his remarks but blanks. Therefore, obviously, he lost the debate. Congratulations on your victory.
But that’s not what everybody is saying this morning, is it? That’s because, besides me and four super-educated proto-sentient robots with effective IQs over 300, nobody is looking at an expurgated transcript of last night’s presidential debate that presents the actual meaningful, cogent and rational content thereof. So what are they looking at instead?
They are looking at video clips of you, Mr. President, at that debate. And what they see now, just as what they saw last night, is a fecking fool who stares off into space, standing there glancing around at nothing with his mouth gaping open like some village eejit from Connacht. They see a doddering, banjaxed senile culchie mumbling away, getting his words all arseways. That’s what they see.
Have you forgotten that a majority of the people who listened to the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate on the radio thought that Nixon had won, while a majority of the people who watched it on television thought Kennedy did? You were on television last night, Mr. President – right there in front of the Lord, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, all the saints and about fifty million people, begorrah. Did you not think to pull your head out of your buhn and realize that?
When you said you wanted to run for a second term and those around you questioned whether that would be a good idea, when they expressed doubts about whether you could defeat Trump in 2024, what did you say?
“Just watch me.”
That’s what you said. You didn’t say, “Just listen to me.” You didn’t say, “Just read transcripts of my public utterances.” You said “Just watch me.” And last night, the whole world did just that – they watched you. They watched you screw a pooch on the church steps during Easter Mass, that’s what they watched you do. And now, thanks to you – you mearbhall old bogtrotter – the Democrats are on the verge of being totally feisigh, and so, due to the prevailing circumstances, are the people of the United States, and two hundred and thirty-six years of American democracy. Maith thú, taoiseach cliste!
Of course, you’re way too vain to step aside. That’s embarrassingly evident even though you said that’s what you would do before you got the cockamamie notion to run for a second term. Which, considering that capitulating now would result in a cacophonous gaggle of opponents gnawing each other’s guts out at the upcoming party convention, may, ironically, be the lesser of two evils. So what to do, eh?
Well, consider a fellow son of the Emerald Isle, old 666, Ronald Wilson Reagan. In 1990, he finally remembered to tell Nancy that in 1978, a doctor told him he had terminal Alzheimer’s disease, after which he asked her if they ever finished making that movie where he played president of the United States. He called Africans monkeys. He said air pollution comes from trees. He made up imaginary welfare queens driving fantasy Cadillacs and told fictional stories about them in his speeches. He espoused a tax policy based on a theory drawn by a drunken economist on the back of a cocktail napkin. He sleepwalked through committing treason during the 1980 presidential campaign while George HW Bush engaged in secret negotiations with the government of Iran. And on, and on, at times the list seems endless. Yet that pitiful example of cognitive incapacity has schools, federal office buildings and a US Navy aircraft carrier named after him, despite the fact that nothing he ever said made half as much sense as the things you say every day.
Why? Because he was an actor, just as Trump is a reality-television star. People like that understand delivery, they understand image and public perception, they understand mob psychology, they understand how to relate to and manipulate an audience. Furthermore, they understand those things at the level of muscle memory. And at that level, a few billion Kentucky-fried brain cells don’t matter, because they don’t have to think about it while they’re doing it.
So it’s going to be tough for you, because you obviously don’t understand those things, at least, apparently, not anymore. You used to, presumably, somewhat, because once upon a time, you were a very successful politician. Now you’re going to have to learn, or re-learn, those things right away. Let’s look at them, shall we?
Delivery. Stand up straight, speak clearly, enunciate and project your words when you talk, for Christ’s sake. Stay on point and stop going off on tangents. Use complete sentences and never digress.
Image and Public Perception. Stop shuffling around like some pathetic stroke victim at a urine-scented retirement home in Florida. Remember that when you’re thirty and you fall down, it’s a joke, and when you’re over sixty and you fall down, they will be looking for reasons to put you in that urine-scented retirement home in Florida with all those pathetic stroke victims. Watch where the hell you’re going, don’t stumble and don’t fall down! And quit being seen just standing there, immobile and staring with a fixed expression like a bad wax replica of yourself at Madame Tussad’s. Look what happened to Mitch McConnell when he started doing that. Lose that tacky zombie act, pronto!
Mob Psychology. An excited crowd is a malleable crowd. Be exciting. Appeal to their emotions, their instincts, their hopes and their fears. When you speak to them, make the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up. Make their hearts race, make the soles of their feet tingle, make them want to shout!
Manipulating the Audience. Lay off the heart-warming reminisces about your humble beginnings in Scranton. Those are boring as hell, they make you look like a prattling codger, and besides, the Bidens had plenty of money – your grandfather made a bundle as a war profiteer and your father used to ride to the hounds in Maryland. They messed up and the family lost it; quit kidding yourself, not to mention the voters. Forget about your sincere displays of empathy and the constant repetitions of those shopworn clichés about America being the greatest country in the world, a country based on an idea, a country that can do anything and yatta-yatta-yatta. Instead show some believable rage at how the Republicans have been raping liberty, justice and the futures of the ninety-nine percent for the last sixty years. Replace your proclamations of personal virtue with some clear and stirring calls to action. If you need some examples of how to do that, watch twelve hours of Bernie Sanders.
Now, go forth and dig out of this massive slit latrine you dug for yourself and jumped into with both feet. Turn this travesty that you have manufactured into a triumph, get re-elected and govern like the wise and great man you know you are.
And whatever you do, make sure you live until January 21, 2029, because the last damned thing this country needs is a President Kamala Harris.
Sincerely,
Tom Collins Martini