Editorial. Trump will be an emboldened political figure and greater challenge

Joe Biden’s Oval Office address following the failed attempt to kill Donald Trump may have been intended, as he said, to “cool down … political rhetoric in this country that has gotten very heated”. But he would do well to heed the advice he sought to give Americans to “take a step back – take stock of where we are, how we go forward from here”.

Mr Trump has rewritten his planned address this week for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he will be anointed unopposed to run again as the party’s candidate for president. The new version of the speech reportedly will be less pointed in its criticisms of Mr Biden. But there is no doubt Mr Trump will take to the stage an emboldened political figure and an even greater challenge for the Democrat incumbent.

Confronted by the same age and infirmity questions that surrounded him before the attempted assassination – but possibly even more so – Mr Biden, 81, must stop deluding himself about being a viable Democrat candidate for the November election. He must come to grips with the reality of his senility, painful though that may be. So must self-serving family members who have been egging him on to stay in the race. His address on Monday morning AEST was not much more reassuring than last Thursday’s gaffe-strewn news conference about the ability of the US President and leader of the free world to campaign for re-election and serve four more years in the White House – until he is 86. It may be that polls show the race between him and Mr Trump, who claims it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening”, remains close nationally. But Mr Trump leads in most of the crucial battleground states where the election will be decided and is widely expected to increase that lead following the strong, undaunted leadership he displayed following the failed attempt to kill him.

As The Wall Street Journal noted, the extent to which voters will rally around Mr Trump is difficult to predict. When Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in March 1981, his job approval rating in Gallup polls rose modestly. But within a few months his standing was roughly back where it had been before the incident. Leading Republican strategist Frank Luntz has suggested the main impact of last Sunday’s shooting is likely to be seen in voter turnout on the right. That is likely to provide a major boost for Mr Trump. “What happened in Pennsylvania will definitely impact the final vote, guaranteeing that every Trump voter will actually vote. Biden, or any other candidate the Democrats put up, will not have the same participation certainty.”

Having said he will stand aside from the race only if he is convinced he cannot win, that is a prospect that should weigh heavily with Mr Biden. Even without the sympathy vote for Mr Trump that seems likely to be engendered by the assassination attempt, 85 per cent of Americans say Mr Biden is too old to serve four more years and 56 per cent of Democrats say he should terminate his candidacy immediately and make way for someone younger and more energetic.

Mr Biden stands discredited not just by his successive infirm appearances and difficulty in articulating his thoughts but also his role in seeking to set the Democrats on a more aggressive course against Mr Trump. With the benefit of hindsight following the assassination attempt, Mr Biden’s address to donors on July 8 when he said “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s eye” does not seem to have been a good idea. Mr Trump’s campaign blames such overheated political rhetoric for the attempt to kill him.

That Mr Biden’s candidacy appears no more viable than it was before the assassination attempt is incontrovertible. The Democratic Party is likely to pay a heavy price if he fails to recognise that, given the further enhanced status as a martyr, a hero and a fighter for American freedom that Mr Trump has gained from surviving the attack. Mr Trump’s claim that providential intervention saved him is preposterous but doubtless will fire up his supporters further at this week’s Republican convention.

The gathering was always going to be more of a coronation of Mr Trump than a convention. That is likely to be even more the case, given the detail emerging about the way the 20-year-old “nerd” Thomas Matthew Crooks, armed with a high-powered AR-style rifle, was able to take up an exposed firing position on an open rooftop not much more than a football field away from where Mr Trump was speaking. As The Wall Street Journal concluded, the attempted assassination presents the fabled US Secret Service with its biggest crisis in decades. The failure of the most powerful nation on Earth to protect a former president inevitably adds further to perceptions of a Biden administration that is badly adrift and has lost its way.