ADVICE FOR THE BIDEN CAMPAIGN

Biden has the strength of character, the experience of years; but his weakness is communication. 

 

Playing to your strengths and mitigating your weakness is the formula for a successful campaign and election.

My Advice:

1.      Do not debate Donald Trump.    Accept that debate is not your strength.   Use the excuse: When you wrestle with a pig in the mud you get dirty and the pig loves it.

2.      Never ever again mention push-ups.   You do not have the strength, stamina or agility of a young man, and bragging about your physical prowess at your age makes you look lame.

3.    Don’t think that every thought that comes through your mind needs to be expressed.   In your appearance with Stacy Abrams on MSNBC you felt the need to try to jump in and comment at the end of each of Stacy’s replies.   A smile would have been enough.

4.    Dead air does not have to be filled.   When I taught school in the Indian villages of Alaska, the native men use to say, “white men talk too much.”   It is true, we feel the need to fill in dead air space and end up rambling.    Make a precise answer, on track, and then shut up. 

5.      Think about the most consist way to express what you are going to say before saying it.   Don’t wander off track with some unrelated story and then try to circle back and make a connection.  It makes you look dotty.  

6.    Once you have made a statement, don’t circle back and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it.  

7.    Men cannot defend themselves from sexual assault claims.  Simply state, I did not do it, and don’t comment further.  Let your surrogates defend you.  

8.    People see you as their lovable uncle.  The don’t view you as brilliant as Obama.   When questioned about policy you should make the point that you will surround yourself with the most intelligent and competent advisors from both political spectrum, and that your cabinet will be picked from the most experienced and capable in specific fields of expertise (reference Rick Perry, Trump’s pick for Department of Energy.)

You are old.  I am old.   That should be played to as an advantage.  We have lived through and experienced history as a continuum that younger men have only read about.   Our perspective is from a long view.

However, age has its disadvantages.  Our brains are our computers that control our facility, and all our experiences and knowledge are stored in our hard drive.   After living through decades, meeting thousands of people, having thousands of experiences: travel, education, relationships… our hard drives fill to capacity.   Unfortunate we don’t have a Disk Cleanup or Optimizer for our hard drives, so information retrieval slows down; but the information is there on reflection.   

Don’t let age become an issue.  Accept the fact that our minds are not as quick as our younger selves.  Talk less, stay focused, don’t ramble.  Age will only become an issue if you display it. 

the Ol’Buzzard