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Notes -
But debate DO tend to move the mind of undecided voters. Well, not always. But often enough. Bush-Perot-Clinton was big, Bush-Gore was big, Trump-Hillary was big. I don't think it's purely performative.
It's punditry on my part. Imagine the American president as a sort of pontifex maximus, a secular priest, who keeps the republic sacred through keeping the forms of rituals and propriety, as Confucius states.
Voters will never outright say that it's part of the sentiment (and neither will it be asked.) Part of Biden's appeal was that he promised to obey the American aesthetic of power, to uphold the norms of republican life. If he's too old and senile to remember how then that advantage goes away.
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