The US presidential candidates debate was truly a disaster for the world. We have a senile president and a liar ex-president, and their dangerous handicaps were both on display on Friday.

Atlanta was political theatre where policy played second banana to performance, and it was there for Joe Biden to win. The 81-year-old had to show he was up to the task of running the US for another four years. But the president was shaky and vacant, his answers sometimes wandering, and he had to correct himself with numbers against 78-year-old Donald Trump’s rabid taxi driver spiel, with the challenger remorselessly blaming Biden for what seems to be all of America’s ills.

These sorts of confrontations are often hard for the incumbent, who must stand on their record. But given Trump’s history of crime, sexual harassment and wasted White House years as COVID-19 and insurrection raged, Biden had plenty to swing at. Instead, during their 77-minute debate, Trump was the assailant, spending 18 minutes on the attack against Biden’s 13 minutes.

The candidates’ debate has sometimes been decisive since John Kennedy’s youthful stylishness in 1960 did down Richard Nixon’s unshaven stodginess. Many complained that new constraints, including muted microphones and no notes, would make Friday’s event boring but Trump’s behaviour in previous debates – when he prowled behind Hillary Clinton like a stalker and relentlessly spoke over Biden in 2020 – called for new parameters. Biden pushed for the debate so early in the campaign to differentiate that his vision for the US was about choice as opposed to Trump’s promises of a more radical and vengeful second term.

Trump stood his ground on Friday and splayed scattered fiction, abuse, lies, jokes and asides honed for the ears of the faithful as he has stomped around the country this year. He made false claims about the January 6 riot, the national debt, the Democrats’ plans to abort babies in the eighth or ninth month or even after birth, the diminution of US power and respect around the world, immigration, how Biden was loathed by police, veterans and African Americans and that his tax cuts were the biggest in history.

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Biden returned fire and tried to refute some of the outrageous claims but repeated bad moments got in the way. He lost his train of thought 12 minutes in, fumbling a response on the number of billionaires in America and the situation on the border and Trump pounced: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Moments of abuse replaced argument. Biden laid into Trump over claims of sexual abuse and his affair with Stormy Daniels, saying the former president has the “morals of an alley cat”. Trump accused Biden of taking money from China.

Trump walked away with the game. The Democrats are belatedly and reportedly scurrying around for a replacement. A second debate is scheduled for September but can Biden last that long in the job?