(upbeat music) (Graphic pops) - Hello, and welcome to "The Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

An already volatile and contentious presidential election year has taken a turn for even more volatility and contentiousness, even more unpredictable.

So what will happen next?

Joining us is Dr. David Jackson from BGSU.

Welcome to "The Journal" again, David.

Thank you for being here.

The last time we talked, it was sort of Biden, Trump, same old, same old.

People weren't happy, didn't seem like it was gonna be nothing but a rerun of the previous election cycle.

And then suddenly the debate happened, and then after that, all sorts of things started to happen.

So just talk a little about what we've experienced over the last month and what that means or doesn't mean, or may mean, or may not mean.

- Sure, I mean, it's a cliche in politics.

People use, I think, different amounts of time, where let's say a week is a lifetime in politics, or a month, or whatever.

Certainly the last few weeks have been something like a lifetime in politics.

So of course there was the disastrous debate performance from President Biden, which persuaded a lot of people that, people looked at it in different ways.

People who supported Biden and still wanted him to be president said he can be president and he can do the job, but the perception is that he can't, and so he can't overcome that perception, and so it wasn't a good idea to keep him on the ticket.

There were certainly others, both Democrats and Republicans, who said, "No, it's not only a perception, it's a reality."

- [Steve] It's reality, we've just, as some people said, "Look, we've just, we've seen it now."

Because I think when people looked at that at first, they're like, "Okay, he has his days "where he's not at the top of his game, "but that's the exception rather than the rule."

But that night made it kind of like, "Oh, maybe this is what he's like all the time, I guess."

Which may or may not be true, but that's, as you said, the perception became reality then that night.

- [David] Yeah, and imagery is important, and so you had that split screen with Donald Trump seeming to be vigorous and energetic, and then next to him, you had a person who is a little bit older, a lot thinner, a weaker voice, and it just... Now, of course, the place where Biden himself probably landed on this is that he said, "It's the perception and not the reality."

He clearly believes that he's capable of governing and capable of serving the term, but he chose to bow out because he didn't think that the campaign could overcome that perception.

And so there was a lot of conversations being had, and then sort of a constant trickle of people in the Democratic Party saying that he should step aside, including, of course, Senator Sherrod Brown here in Ohio coming out sort of late, but in that weekend when it happened, I think it was when could Sherrod Brown's position have been the thing that broke the dam?

Probably not, because it was an ongoing trickle, and he obviously had his own personal political calculations that he had to make.

- [Steve] Yeah, here in Ohio, because he's in a tough U.S. Senate race, or appears to be a tough U.S. Senate race.

- Yeah, yeah, and you see him doing all sorts of things in terms of things that he believes are necessary in order to win in Ohio.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

- Taking positions that are sometimes against the Biden administration, sometimes positions supported by Republicans, and that's just smart politics on his part.

So it then led, of course, to President Biden stepping aside.

- Now, did that surprise you?

I'm given you've obviously watched these things for years.

For a person like that, who that's been his whole career, he always, his ambition was to be president.

It was not a bad ambition.

It was that that's what he wanted to be.

To walk away from that had to be, for him, I would think, incredibly tough after working all those years, finally achieving, and then being told by hearing people going, "You're not up to the job anymore."

I mean, no one ever wants to hear that no matter what you do.

- [David] Yeah, I mean- - [Steve] And for him, you're the most powerful person in the world and they're telling you, "Yeah, but you're not."

And that would have to be, that would throw you for a loop, I would think, for a little while, yeah.

- I mean, he ran for president in 1988 and he ran for president in 2008, of course, then he got chosen to be the vice president.

Some people were disappointed in him not being up for it in terms of running for president in 2016, which one can do counterfactual history and say, would he have been able to beat Trump when things have been completely different?

But yeah, I mean, some of these comparisons are often helpful for some people, but you can think about it in some ways from a sports perspective and there's a tendency among some stellar athletes to want to stay in the game once the game has passed them by because it's what they know.

Obviously, the game passes an athlete by when they're much younger than President Biden is at this point.

But yeah, when you've spent your life and your career and you've gotten the most powerful position in the world and walking away from that must be incredibly personally difficult.

And I'm not gonna judge things in terms of taking any sort of a partisan or ideological stance, except to take him at his word that he believes it's in the best interest of, as he put it, both the country and his political party for him to do this.

And whatever you can say about why he did it, he did it.

He actually made the decision to walk away from the pinnacle.

- [Steve] Sure, and you mentioned the sports reference because it's almost as if he felt, and if you're a baseball pitcher, you still feel when you need to, you can bring that 101 mile an hour fastball when you have to.

And as you said, it's tough to, you still believe you can, whether you can or not is another story.

- [David] Oh, it's like that country song, I'm not as good as I once was, but I'm still as good once as I ever was.

- [Steve] There you go.

- [David] I think that's the feeling that these guys have.

- [Steve] And elected officials, especially because they, they're achievers, they're a personalities, they're ambitious people.

They strive to be, well, they strive to win elections.

That's what they live for.

So he's won one of the most important elections you can win in the world.

And now you're being told, well, and the one thing I thought was interesting, I don't know if you saw this too, he was being interviewed and someone said, well, did you watch the debate?

And his response was, I don't think so, no.

And I thought, well, that's kind of threw me for a moment.

It's like, well, do you either remember watching the debate afterwards or you don't, but that sort of made you think, did he not go back and look at his performance?

And if he did, does he not remember it?

And that was so unfortunately in kind of in keeping then that, as you said, kept feeding this narrative that developed.

- Well, he had to have realized that every single thing he did and said in the 105 days until the election would be viewed through the same lens.

And that there was absolutely no room for error whatsoever for on his part, because everything would be viewed as is this evidence that he's not up for the job?

Is this evidence that he can't do it?

And so, again, I know that we believe that he believes he can do the job.

That's why he hasn't, for example, resigned the presidency.

And instead he's gonna continue on.

But I think he had to come to the conclusion that a campaign based on every single move he makes, being analyzed from the perspective of whether he's mentally fit or not, is not in the best interest of his party winning.

- [Steve] Yeah, because that becomes what the discussion is rather than the issues or anything else he does.

When we come back, I wanna ask you a question about the fact, is the bar different for him than the other candidate?

Because the level of scrutiny, as you just said, was gonna be incredibly intense.

Like every word, every move, every step.

Is there equal treatment going on?

It's obviously depending on where you are in the spectrum, you would say yes or no.

But it'd just be interesting to see because it didn't seem like that level of scrutiny was being paid the other way because the other gentleman has made some faux pas, named some names and got things confused a little bit too.

But that's sort of written off as like, well, okay, no big deal, but we'll see.

So back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson, professor in the Department of Political Science, Bowling Green State University here on "The Journal."

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

We're a little less than a hundred days away from the election as we sit here and talk today.

We're talking about Joe Biden, the fact that he came to realization that every single breath he took, every move, every step, every word he said was gonna be scrutinized.

It's obvious he felt that that same level, that bar was not the same for his opponent, Donald Trump.

Is that, should that be an issue or is that an issue at this point?

- Well, up until, you know, a little better than a week and a half or so ago, the presidential election consisted of two quite old individuals who, because they're not that far apart in age from each other, as I've heard it said, would have basically, they would have been in high school together had they gone to the same high school.

So that being said, you know, the dynamic has obviously changed.

And, you know, with regard to Trump, I mean, I'm not a gerontologist, but you can see that those two individuals have aged differently.

- [Steve] Sure.

- [David] And the way that Joe Biden has aged is a way that he's thin, he appears to be frail.

His voice has become sort of a softer and more breathy.

He has, you know, occasional senior moments as both candidates do.

Trump, you know, is a bigger guy.

He carries more, you know, flesh.

And he has a sort of hyperkinetic way in that debate of, you know, a fire hose barrage of statements that shows, you know, a form of energy.

And that has, I think, potentially the effect of distracting from the content of what he says because he's certainly, you know, especially in that contrast when the two of them are on the same stage, he appeared 100% to be the more vigorous, you know, active senior.

And whereas Biden appeared to be, you know, older and more frail.

That's not uncommon in American politics for image and style to override substance.

And without being partisan or ideological, I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump says a lot of things that aren't true, says a lot of things that are bizarre, a lot of, if he stays on script on the teleprompter, he does have the capacity to deliver, you know, a coherent speech that can sometimes include, you know, specific policies when he deviates from the script and starts riffing, you know, some of the material lands and some of the material doesn't land and some of it's, you know, absolutely worth, there's so much of it that it's difficult for the media to figure out how to handle it.

You know, what to do about, you know, the constant references recently, for example, to Hannibal Lecter.

That, you know, but he does sort of get graded on a curve, one could argue to take the professorial language because people are just saying, well, you know, that's just Trump being Trump.

But if that were just a guy being a guy, that's one thing, he is the nominee of, there's a 50/50 chance he's gonna be president.

- [Steve] Right, right.

- [David] So you should experience the same level of scrutiny that Biden did.

- Do you think, and I know we obviously were not inside Donald Trump's head, is do you think that's a deliberate thing to just, I mean, when he goes off script says, is that calculated to do that?

I know it plays well to the audience he's in front of, but it does have that effect of then, while you're sorting through all of those other things, the other stuff, you never get around to that.

Because I can remember in 2016, when we sat here along with, you know, Dr. Hughes and Dr. Miller and people, we would spend 25 minutes of the program talking about Donald Trump because there was so much going on all the time.

And it's like, oh yeah, by the way, Hillary Clinton is running also, but there was so much to sift through.

So is that part of his process to say, I'm just gonna throw so much out there, you can't focus on, if I do misstep, there's so much of it, you never get around to really digging to the bottom of it and going, wow, that was a little different than we expected, or that wasn't as accurate as it seemed at the time.

- Well, again, and I would argue that this is not going to be an ideological or partisan statement, but I think it's fair to say objectively that Donald Trump is not an expert in public policy, domestic or international.

He's not terribly interested, it doesn't seem, in the details of public policy and public policy proposals and thinking this stuff through.

So he has to take a different route.

And his route is to fill all of the space and air of any place that he's in with words, words, words, images, thoughts, ideas, not careful analysis of the best way to handle the situation in Gaza or handle inflation, but to command attention.

So he is either a natural born or he acquired the skill in terms of commanding attention, developing a brand, developing a personality that appeals to large numbers of people.

And so that sort of barrage approach and the riffing when he goes off script, he can make mistakes when he does that, that's the risk.

I hate to make the comparison because he was so negative toward John McCain, but one of the reasons why the press enjoyed covering John McCain is because he was a less scripted, of course, compared to Donald Trump.

- [Steve] He was very scripted, almost anyone is.

- [David] They say he would sit in the back of a campaign bus with reporters and go off the record and just be John McCain and he was a colorful character and an interesting guy to hang around, and I'm sure, and so I think that's a lot of what Trump goes for is he has this way of sort of trying to tune into what people are feeling.

- [Steve] Which obviously, I mean, if you go back to Bill Clinton, you know, it was the I feel your pain, that was the line back then.

So it's something almost the way he's been able to figure out as you said just now, how people feel, whether it's good, whether it's policy development or not, he's tapped into that apparently and then knows how to keep reinforcing that.

- Yeah, in some ways it's a question, I guess you could say of empathy, although there's been like, so Clinton could telegraph empathy and then translate it into what he was going to do policy-wise to solve those problems.

- [Steve] To help you with- - Certainly Donald Trump has tuned into the feelings of people who support him, but he doesn't always offer anything more than I'm angry about the same things you're angry about and but it's highly effective strategy.

- Well, and then the other thing, Bill Clinton, of course, could tell the story, you know, the boy from hope and all that and kind of a sort of a rags to riches kind of approach.

Donald Trump can't really use that angle and yet he's been able to, as you said, reach in there and basically emotionally connect with people who feel even though he didn't experience maybe the tough life they had, he still, he understands it and that's a pretty incredible thing to be able to accomplish given that he's, you know, a Ivy League incredibly rich person over time and is, you know, real estate mogul, all that kind of thing and yet he's been able to connect with people who have no touch with that lifestyle at all and yet they feel he's like them.

- Well, we have to remember that he is a creature of entertainment media, that before even the apprentice and before his little forays into professional wrestling, he made his name and reputation in New York City in the tabloids, seeking attention, finding ways to get attention and getting that attention and so I say, was he a natural born, you know, showman or did he acquire it?

Well, he probably had some natural skill in that area and then through, you know, an apprenticeship, if you will, over the last 40 years, he figured out how to market.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, when we look at, and we got just a moment in this segment, we'll probably come back to this, the fact that we, you know, we talked about Joe Biden stepping out, that's not the first time, so we come back and we talk maybe a little historical, other presidents have done it but it hasn't happened in a long, long time and the circumstances aren't exactly, aren't really the same but the outcome is the same in terms of a president walking away while with the opportunity to run for another term.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal," our guest is Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University.

So much has happened and it seems as if a lot of this has been a long, long time ago but it's only been within the last month.

For some reason and maybe for some people, it seems like the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a long time ago given all the things, this is moving so quickly but that is something that of course we haven't experienced probably what, since the 80s with Ronald Reagan, the attempt on his life, you know, the unfortunate events in 1968 where people actually were assassinated or killed.

Put that kind of in place because that's something most people have not experienced as a American citizen, a voter, just a, you know, someone who may not pay any attention to politics, that's sort of new territory for most people.

- Yeah, and it's important to, you know, acknowledge the awfulness of that.

Even the current House of Representatives, Republican leader and Democratic leader, the most, one of the most polarized situations possible have come together to, you know, to create an investigation of what happened, of what went wrong, of how a person was able to get within 400 feet.

And maybe, you know, if you measure it in some ways, an inch or two from, you know, being successful in assassinating a presidential candidate from one of the two major political parties, which is obviously an incredibly jarring event to have happen in politics.

And it needs to sort of be acknowledged as whatever side, you know, anybody's on, as, you know, President Biden's speech and others have said.

- [Steve] Yeah, no place for this.

- [David] No place for political violence.

And unfortunately, you know, there may be some increasing acceptance among people, some people of political violence.

- [Steve] As a means to achieve.

- [David] And that doesn't mean, somebody could say, you know, well, you know, sure that person, you know, needs to go away or that person needs to, you know, and that doesn't mean they're gonna go out and do it.

So there's a difference between somebody, you know, saying in a survey that they, you know, have a level of comfort with political violence that the rest of us would find unacceptable.

That doesn't mean that the person who has that level of comfort goes out and gets a gun and tries to do something.

But really what's interesting then after acknowledging, you know, the humanity of the fact that, you know, a person came very close to being murdered for running for political office is the assassination attempt happened, the Republican convention happened, the selection of the vice president happened on the Republican side.

And somehow whether planned or not, the Democrats were able to undercut the benefit, the bump, if you will, that would be.

Now it might just be that things are so baked in anyway.

And then there's a case to be made that Donald Trump's coalition is Donald Trump's coalition and he's never going to expand that coalition.

So if you don't see, you know, a big bump coming out of those events, it wouldn't have been surprising anyway.

But the Democrats managed with Biden pulling out and giving it over to Harris to steal the attention, to steal the energy.

And there's even polling evidence that shows the enthusiasm gap is narrowing and closing that, you know, there was a much higher enthusiasm on the Republican side than the Democratic side.

And that seems to be closing.

I listened to a radio commentator on the way in speaking of the fact that there's sort of an anti-incumbent bias happening globally right now.

And the Democrats managed to undercut that because Harris obviously is the incumbent vice president, but she's not the incumbent president.

And there'll be books and articles written about this for years to come to figure out if that was actually strategic on the part of the Biden-Harris campaign.

- [Steve] Or just- - [David] Because they were.

Because I've heard a lot of Democrats are saying, this was brilliant on our part.

Not me saying I'm a Democrat, but Democrats saying on our part as Democrats, because they had Biden take all the heat from the Republican convention.

They had this vice presidential nomination come out.

And then once the VP was locked in, and then they were like, hey, here's something for you.

Bam, let's switch out the nominee.

- [Steve] Yeah, over here a little bit, we've got something you might wanna notice, yeah.

- [David] And whether it was intentional or not, or just good luck, is the old thing that, well, Will Rogers said, I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Democrat.

So for them to pull off something that strategic is probably a little- - Give it, yeah.

- [David] Stretches credulity or strains credulity.

But on the other hand, the enthusiasm does seem to be real around vice president Harris.

I mean, the $200 million raised, 170,000 volunteers, these phone calls that are happening to raise money and have conversations.

These Zoom meetings where 200,000 people show up and break Zoom, basically.

People are asking, is that a sugar high?

Is that just a temporary buzz?

Or is it, you know, you know and we'll know?

- [Steve] Yeah, we'll know and- - [David] The same way you know if a sugar buzz is real or not.

You know, wait and see if the guy crashes, right?

And so- - Yeah, we'll find out.

- [David] We got 99 days or whatever.

- [Steve] Yeah, which seems like that's gonna be a long time given the way things have moved in the last 25 or 30 days.

- [David] Well, that's something that people have been talking about too, other systems, particularly parliamentary systems have much shorter election cycles.

- [Steve] This would be normal.

- [David] Right, yeah.

- [Steve] Let's have an election next week.

I mean, that's sort of how that works in some countries.

- And I've heard an argument that's pretty interesting that that might actually benefit Harris because with Hillary Clinton as the first woman nominee of a major political party, she had 30, 40 years of baggage and attacks.

And people would say, "Well, you know, "I just don't like her."

People, I heard somebody say this today in fact and about Hillary and they would ask why, "Well, I just don't like her."

That would be it.

- [Steve] And then, but that's enough to get a note to either get not a vote or a no vote.

- [David] But Harris, you know, there are people who don't like her and then she will definitely experience, you know, the ginning up of her negatives.

Because, you know, there's a couple billion dollars yet to be spent in these campaigns.

So there's only a hundred days to go, but- - [Steve] We haven't seen anything yet, is what you have to say, yeah.

Now, real quick, and I know we could, because we've got just a moment or two, the selection of J.D.

Vance, obviously Senator from Ohio, which he was on the list, but there were also a lot of other people that they thought, because sometimes, you know, the pick is like, "Well, I need this person to fill in a gap "in my resume or my particular constituency."

But that's not the case with Vance.

Ohio is pretty much a solid, Vance was gonna win here next time he runs, assuming he would be a Senator then, and Trump was gonna win Ohio, it appeared.

At least that was the way it looked.

So any, I mean, why J.D.

Vance?

- Well, so I heard Chuck Todd from NBC talking about this, and he said, "Everybody, when the run-up "to a selection of a vice presidential candidate "Talks about them bringing a state, them bringing a state."

And then he went through a list of all the recent vice presidential nominees and said, "What states did those actually?"

The last one he could think of was Al Gore being expected to deliver Tennessee.

That's quite a while ago.

But they do get chosen to bring along certain constituencies, I think.

And so the classic example of that would be Donald Trump choosing Mike Pence to assuage the fears of conservative Christians at that time, that this was an okay ticket.

Or with George W. Bush picking Cheney, bringing in sort of the more serious, governing-oriented.

- [Steve] Someone with deep, well, then what we've considered deep state experience, I guess, and that was a good thing.

And unfortunately, we're out of time.

- [David] J.D.

Vance doesn't fill any gaps.

So that was a different choice for a different set of reasons that it's not entirely clear what those reasons were.

- [Steve] And we'll see if it works, I guess.

That'll be the thing.

So yeah, sorry to cut you off.

We're out of time because there's obviously a lot more to talk about.

And good news is we've got 97 more days to talk about it.

So we'll be back again to do this fairly soon, probably.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday at eight o'clock on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

(upbeat music)