The Biden-Trump debate will lay bare a fateful national crossroads

CNN —

Presidential debates crystalize a quadrennial dilemma for a country contemplating a new political direction. But they’re usually defined more by trivial personality quirks, zeitgeist moments and gaffes than high-level ideological argument.

Al Gore’s melodramatic sighs, George H.W. Bush’s unwise glance at his watch, a day’s growth on Richard Nixon’s chin and Donald Trump’s bulk looming over Hillary Clinton remain iconic years after the policy clashes in those debates have been forgotten.

And while Thursday night’s debate hosted by CNN between President Joe Biden and ex-President Trump could also turn on a theatrical flurry between two men who openly despise one another, the policy meat of a presidential debate has rarely been so important as in this neck-and-neck White House race.

The country is confronting a perilous moment, internally estranged over politics and culture and as multiple foreign policy crises deepen. America faces a choice in November that will lead, like in Robert Frost’s poem, down one of two divergent roads from which there may be no coming back.

A charged political backdrop to a vital debate

Trump’s attempt to regain the White House, less than four years after he attempted to steal the last election, poses a potentially existential question for the democratic system. The former president’s conservative backers are, meanwhile, proposing an evisceration of the bureaucracy and the politicization of judicial and intelligence leadership posts to reconcile the goals of a GOP candidate sporting one criminal conviction, three other indictments and a thirst for revenge.

At the same time, and despite a roaring jobs market, millions of Americans are worn down by high prices and the cost of