Just before 9pm on Wednesday, Donald Trump was preparing to address the nation from behind the English Oak desk that Queen Victoria had made from the timbers of HMS Resolute for President Rutherford B Hayes in 1880.

Over the 140 years it has been in the White House's collection, it has become synonymous with the presidency itself, and, since the advent of radio and television, it has acquired a historical weight that goes far beyond the 1,000 pounds at which it tips the scales.

It's where presidents have sat as Americans have invited them into their homes at times of crisis and in times of triumph.

Franklin D Roosevelt sat behind it as he assured Americans that their money would be safe during the bank holiday he ordered upon assuming office in 1933; when he signed the declaration of war with Japan on December 9, 1941; and when he told Americans that US forces had begun the process of liberating Europe in June 1944.

When Harry Truman took FDR's place less than a year later, he used an Oval Office address to reassure the American people, many of whom had known no other president, and later on, to announce the surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in May and September of 1945.

And whether it was Eisenhower speaking on the need to send federal troops to enforce desegregation in Little Rock, Lyndon B Johnson consoling Americans after the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Bobby Kennedy, Nixon resigning, Reagan comforting the children of America after the Challenger disaster, or George W Bush reassuring a frightened country after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the image of a president behind that iconic piece of office furniture has defined America's tragedies and triumphs for more than a century.

It was that archetype of American leadership which Donald Trump sought to evoke when he took his place before the cameras on Wednesday night. Television technicians adjusted their focus, and the networks flashed "special report" graphics on their screens.

But as a sound technician clipped a microphone to the president's tie, the first words he spoke fell well short of the mark set by his predecessors.

"Ah f*ck. Uh oh. I got a pen mark," said the 45th President of the United States, who asked those present if anyone had a wipe or some "white stuff" to hide the stain on his shirt.

Things went downhill from there.

After describing the virus which has sickened people in almost every state as a "foreign virus" (as if it was taking the job of a hard-working, law-abiding American pathogen), and boasting that his administration had conducted most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus “in modern history," Trump announced that he would be signing an order "suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days."

"These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing," he added, before assuring Americans that their insurance providers "agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing."

But after he'd finished speaking, in what might be a first for a presidential Oval Office address, members of his administration began immediately walking back what he'd said.

Instead, White House officials said that cargo transport would not be suspended, permanent US residents would be exempt from the restrictions, and the travel ban itself would only apply to the Schengen Area in which free movement between countries is permitted.

Insurance companies also had to clarify that their negotiations with the White House had been about the cost of testing, not treatment.

The stock markets reacted (and are still reacting) badly, to say the least.

Michael Waldman, who wrote more than 2,000 speeches as President Bill Clinton's chief speechwriter from 1995 to 1999, was aghast at the haphazard nature of Trump's attempt at presidential-level oratory.

"I am having a hard time remembering a speech that was more counterproductive than that one," said Waldman, now director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school. "For a president to use an Oval Office address at a time of national emergency to put out policy announcements that were wrong and repudiated by his own administration within minutes boggles the mind."

Waldman described Trump's botched speech as "part of a pattern of crisis leadership that is just not funny."

"Leadership during crisis is hard because it involves often playing against what is human nature for people, like steering against the skid in a car," he explained. "You have to tell people the truth. If things are bad, you have to level with them about them being bad. That will give a leader the credibility to be taken seriously on what they want to do — you have to know what you're talking about so you don't keep correcting yourself."

Crooked Media co-founder Tommy Vietor, who served in the Obama administration as a national security spokesperson, said the mistakes in Trump's prepared remarks were "inexcusable."

"I could not have imagined a scenario where the President of the United States could give an Oval Office address about a subject of this magnitude and make errors that panic people like this," he said. "This was a moment that called for clarity and facts, and he bungled it enormously."

Vietor laid the blame for Trump's disastrous performance at the feet of the speech's authors, White House senior advisers Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner (who is also the president’s son-in-law).

"Not having a racist and a dilettante write your speeches is a good rule of thumb for any president, but they have no subject-matter expertise at all and I think that was born out in the so-called solutions Trump put forward," he said (though the White House says Miller "condemns racism and bigotry in all its forms".)

But even the best-written speech in history might not have helped Trump achieve what he sought out to achieve by delivering it, Vietor cautioned, noting that President Obama had also delivered a speech during the BP oil spill crisis that was widely panned.

"A speech is not going to get us through a crisis that is unraveling in real time. He could have given the perfect set of remarks last night, put people at ease by laying out real proposals for how to manage the crisis and economic ideas that actually would help, but he's still going to wake up today, tomorrow, and the next day with a government that seems to be incapable of testing people for this virus, which means it's spreading, which means things are getting worse," he said. "The thing they don't seem to get is you can't spin your way out of this. You have to solve the underlying problem and that requires competence and a president who is willing to model appropriate behavior, speak truth, and give people bad news, and he won't do that."

But because 2020 is an election year, Americans who found themselves aghast by Trump's Oval Office star turn got a look at an alternative less than 24 hours later, when former Vice President Joe Biden appeared behind a lectern at a Wilmington, Delaware hotel to address the crisis that has already caused unprecedented disruptions to American life.

At the outset of his speech — the point where Trump had offered boasts and tried to assign blame — Biden offered Americans something they had not seen since January 2017: a glimpse at a consoler-in-chief.

"I know people are worried, and my thoughts are with all those who are directly fighting this virus — those infected, families that have suffered a loss, our first responders and healthcare providers who are putting themselves on the line for others. And I’d like to thank those who are already making sacrifices to protect us — whether that’s self-quarantining or cancelling events or closing campuses," Biden said. "Because whether or not you are infected, or know someone who is infected, or have been in contact with an infected person, this will require a national response. Not just from our elected leaders or our public health officials — from all of us."

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"We all must follow the guidance of health officials and take appropriate precautions — to protect ourselves, and critically, to protect others, especially those who are most at risk from this disease," he continued, adding later that his campaign would be canceling large public events until advised that it is safe for such gatherings to resume by a committee of experts his campaign has assembled.

"We will be led by the science," he declared.

While the Trump campaign announced that it would cancel a number of its own rallies late Thursday, the campaign’s national press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, had ridiculed the idea of canceling any events during a television appearance just 24 hours earlier.

Joe Lockhart, who served as Bill Clinton's press secretary during his 1999 impeachment trial, said Biden's address provided Americans with a "stark contrast" to the incumbent president.

"He had concrete ideas on testing, how to help the displaced and making this a global effort, and most of all no one is going to have to clean up for him after this speech," he said. “In short, he looked like a president."

Veteran Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins concurred with Lockhart's assessment.

"That's what a president looks like — it was factual, it was concise, it was sober, and it's what the American people needed to hear," he said. "When you juxtapose what we saw in the Oval Office… [that] explains why the markets are tumbling and why Americans are terrified and why our outlook for the next couple months is pretty bleak."

"At the moment when the American people need to have faith that they're being told the truth, the president sat down behind the Oval Office desk last night and read from a teleprompter, but the bar is so low for him that it's done nothing to make people feel like it's things are going to get better."

And it wasn't just Democrats who were impressed with Biden's performance.

One former Republican elected official who cut his teeth in the Tea Party movement but asked to remain anonymous for fear of harassment from his former colleagues put it succinctly: "Biden f*cking became president today."

Another ex-Tea Party Republican wasn't shy about speaking on the record about the events of the past 24 hours.

Joe Walsh, the Illinois ex-Congressman who recently attempted to challenge Trump in the GOP primary, predicted that Trump's disastrous speech and Biden's response would be remembered as an inflection point which boosted the former VP's chances of occupying the Oval Office at this time next year.

"Trump's sh*tty response to this pandemic paved the way for a guy like Biden to stand in front of the American people today and just reassure people and calm them," he said. "That's something Trump is just incapable of doing."