Bob Bauer, the president's personal attorney, gets candid about debates.
President Joe Biden's personal attorney, Bob Bauer , portrayed Donald Trump in Biden's mock debate sessions during the last presidential election campaign — a role Biden aides presume he'll reprise in the coming days. | Francis Chung/POLITICOJoe Biden has fled Washington for Camp David to prepare for next week’s debate with Donald Trump. As he boarded Air Force One yesterday, Biden gave a big thumbs-up when asked how debate prep was going.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive producer Kara Tabor and senior producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here: Correct. And he hadn’t. And Ron Klain detected that. And so in a break, he asked me — he was somewhat surprised — he said, “Has he gone that far?” And I immediately realized he had not. Now, since then, he’s talked about the great justices he appointed and that this was the right decision,and so forth. But that was a mistake. You want to avoid those kinds of mistakes because you don’t want the candidate preparing for an argument that the candidate is not going to hear.
Speaking purely for myself, the Commission simply didn’t adapt. I mean, it’s a private organization. It’s a 501. And so its influence lasts as long as it credibly performs that mission and over time with the candidates in particular, that credibility became quite strained. Not because the people on the commission are not good people and don’t have the best interests of the country in mind. I know some of them, and they do, but I think it was doomed to obsolescence eventually.
I would say that’s graceful, but somewhat disingenuous. The expectation certainly in press circles is that the presidential debates will take place, and the tradition commits the candidates to accepting. And if they don’t accept, they’re bucking a tradition that’s critically important to the conduct of American democratic life. That is one answer I’d have. The other answer I’d have was, yes, of course it’s before the nominees are picked.
Well, as a student of debates, here’s how I would respond. First of all, you use the word “lines” and there is a tendency to zero in on the lines. It’s a debate. I don’t want to characterize him in that way. I certainly think in many respects he was misguided. But I’m not going to say that he had a political agenda. But the editorializing in the report was first of all, in my view, flatly inconsistent with departmental guidelines for the way third parties are treated or subjects who are not charged or third parties are treated in reports like that. And I truly do not understand it.
So the notion was, let’s return it to the Department of Justice and provide enough independence so that the public can have confidence in the special prosecutor’s ability to escape any kind of political pressure. But let’s not disturb the attorney general’s role as head of the department and ensure that the attorney general has adequate opportunity and conceded authority to learn about the investigation as it unfolds, to supervise it as appropriate.
Let me just begin with a practical point, which is not an ethical point. The practical point is be careful what you wish for. And I just think it’s a very dangerous game to play. The idea that you would spend money to persuade people to vote for someone you actually think is dangerous if it were to win office raises for me some significant questions.
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