Biden’s social media needs a refresh

Joe Biden has a cold. That was the desperate message sent out by sources close to the president halfway through Thursday night’s painful debate. Biden’s sick-note recalls the first televised debate in 1960, when the incumbent vice president and Republican nominee Richard Nixon, recently hospitalised and still recovering from a staph infection, appeared pale and sickly beside the tanned, waspy Democrat John F. Kennedy who had the advantage of makeup on his side.

Six-and-a-half decades on, the presidential debates remain little more than a beauty pageant, this time apparently with morticians staffing the makeup team. The televised format changed the presidency forever, laying on candidates the expectation to come across not just statesmanlike, but photogenic, eloquent and quick-witted, too. It has become a high-stakes form of reality television, just a remote-click away from the Kardashians.

But fashions change. Television seems to be in its dying days, with cable network viewership tanking across the board.