A wandering Biden may lead Trump to VP running mate selection of Doug Burgum

Had Donald Trump interrupted President Joe Biden's nursing home recreation room stand-up (or don’t fall) act it would have amounted to the political equivalent of poisoning someone in Hospice. No reason to murder the dying — politically speaking.

Never has Trump appeared so disciplined as he did Thursday on the Atlanta debate stage. In fact, Trump could have yielded all of his time, left the debate, and scouted Georgia himself for those 12,000 votes from the 2020 election that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger couldn't find for him — and still won the debate, in full absentia, such was Biden's night. The Titanic at least made it to sea. Biden didn't even leave the shore before disaster.

Trump stayed on message, yes, with outrageous lies like his assertion that working, undocumented immigrants receive Social Security benefits. ("It's the opposite, man," Biden could have retorted with all the working-class anger he could summon. But no, it was craft time at the home.) 

Former President Trump gave Biden dozens of tap-ins before they even got to golf (I’m not sure about Biden’s alleged 6 handicap or Trump’s self-asserted length off the tee) — but Biden appeared more focused on standing up than battering down a parade of lies and exaggerations — albeit untruths told by Trump with great clarity, aplomb and even joy.

With the nation, even the usual Democratic palace whisperers and sycophants on MSNBC, questioning the basic fitness of the 81-year-old Biden, Trump found a new role — that of the straight man on the stage.

Trump's smart play, and he's an instinctive politician, was to rein in his usual barking outrageousness, to the extent he could stop himself, and let Biden reinforce what most people, just being people, assessing another person, as a person, not a politician, see with Biden.

As for Trump, he can now tack toward a more, well, moderated approach in which he stays in this straight-man role and even goes against character into disciplined appearances in which he forgoes facts and makes policy statements in this more subdued manner.

He'll keep his cult-like base, but can reach independents and potentially win back some moderate Republicans with the approach.

The best man for Trump to place at his side for this new turn in the campaign may just be Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, and former GOP candidate for the White House himself, who understands rural economic development as well as anyone I have interviewed running for the presidency.

Burgum could help Trump outperform in rural areas, and would reinforce the aspects of a Trump campaign that are most useful right now, assuming Biden is the nominee, which is almost assured, in spite of the anxieties of Democrats and The New York Times editorial board.

Burgum is now leading the Predictit political futures market in which people can wager on who Trump will select as his running mate. Burgum shares are trading at the highest prices — followed by J.D. Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio.

If Burgum gets the nod, it could elevate rural issues in a way we have not seen for generations.

Drive into Des Moines through Grimes or Altoona and each week you witness development happening at breakneck speed — as if you are viewing it through a time-lapse lense that accelerates the video at thousands-of-times normal speed. Meanwhile, we see dwindling downtowns and atrophying aspirations in sweeps of rural Iowa.

Is it just the market, the invisible hand of capitalism -- inevitable, this great intra-state migration of optimism and energy from rural Iowa to the cities?

I've asked versions of this question to candidates at all levels for the better part of three decades.

Burgum clearly understands the stakes and the scope of what is a rural crisis.

"I'm just a small-town kid," Burgum says.

Burgum hails from Arthur, North Dakota, a community of about 300 people. He worked his way through college, North Dakota State University, sweeping chimneys and went on to earn a master's in business administration from Stanford University and founded a tech company, Great Plains Software, an organization so successful that Microsoft acquired it.

I talked with Burgum last summer following a town hall in Denison, Iowa, a western reach of the state, at some length about rural economic development, why small towns are struggling, his thoughts on suburbs. At one point, thinking we were done and respectful of his need to leave Denison for other cities, I turned off my tape recorder. He smiled, told me to turn it back on, that rural development was his wheelhouse, that he had more to say, even if it made him late for an upcoming tour.

(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. Please follow other writers on the roster below. )