Normally, I don’t pay too much attention to the Vice Presidential debate in a presidential election campaign because they tend not to matter all that much. Certainly, everyone was excited to see Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin debate Sen. Joe Biden in 2008 because she was such a wild card and everyone tuned in to see if she would fall on her face. (She actually held up pretty well.) There have been famous VP debates in which one of the candidates got skewered by the other, as when Democratic Sen. Lloyd Benson of Texas deftly took down the callow Senator from Indiana Dan Quayle with his withering, “I knew John Kennedy, John Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you sir are no John Kennedy.” But mostly they’re forgettable. In fact, Vice Presidential candidates, even the ones who are part of the winning ticket, are often pretty much forgotten.
But this year I think it might be different. Mostly it’s because it really does appear there will only be one debate between Harris and Trump because Trump is intellectually lazy and knows that he’s incapable of actually preparing for a debate at Harris’s level. He can’t risk another catastrophic failure. So, regrettably, this Vice Presidential debate tomorrow night may be the last big event of the campaign before the election is over.
According to a recent Pew Survey, a quarter of the American people haven’t heard of either Democratic Gov. Tim Walz or GOP Sen. JD Vance so the debate will be very enlightening for them. (I somehow doubt they are the type of people who will tune in but you never know.) Of those who have heard of them, 34% of Americans view Vance favorably, while 42% view him unfavorably and 39% of Americans see Walz favorably, while 33% view him unfavorably. (Vance has the worst favorable ratings of any VP candidate in the last 20 years.) In that respect Walz goes into the debate with a pretty fair advantage.
I would guess that Vance has made a very bad impression because of his nasty, cold personality and very extreme ideology but that’s just a guess. The creepy stuff about unmarried cat ladies destroying the world was not a winning introduction to the national stage and his latest crusade against immigrants from “Haitia” has been, well, deplorable. Walz, on the other hand, comes off as a very warm, regular guy which just isn’t something that offends normal people.
Whether those perceptions will hold up in a debate remains to be seen. The two presidential debates in this election campaign so far have been among the most consequential we’ve ever seen so who knows what might happen with this one?
Apparently, Vance and Walz have both been preparing like candidates usually do, unlike Donald Trump who says he already knows everything he needs to know. Vance has been working with various members of his team including Trump confidante Jason Miller, going over Walz’s record as a congressman and Governor. Walz himself is being played by Rep. Tom Emmer, who has known Walz for years and reportedly can do a fair impression of his voice and mannerisms.
Emmer appeared on “This Week” and refused to talk about Vance simply refusing to move off his talking points about Tim Walz being “Gavin Newsom in a flannel shirt” and portraying Trump as the guy who “fixed the country then Biden and Harris broke it and he’s going to fix it again.” Maybe that’s just one big feint but I’m guessing that’s the Vance game plan — attack Walz as a San Francisco hippie, hit Biden and Harris and pump up Trump.
Walz has Pete Buttigieg playing Vance in his debate prep and his team includes some of the veterans who worked with Harris on hers (which is a good sign.) Buttigieg appeared on Tim Miller’s Bulwark podcast and didn’t give away the game plan but when Miller joked that he hoped playing Vance wouldn’t adversely affect him he said, “I’m going into that head space but hopefully I’ll be able to find my way back out of it. It’s an interesting place to be.” I think it must be a frightening place to be, personally.
Both Vance and Walz have fairly recent experience debating. The LA Times’s Paul Thornton went back and watched some of them and came away with some interesting impressions. He believes that Vance has the edge because “he comes off as fluent on policy, and he can nimbly respond to attack” and in the 2022 Senatorial debates with Congressman Tim Ryan, “he used just about every question from moderators as an opportunity to paint Ryan as petty and hypocritical.” Boy that sure sounds like Vance, doesn’t it?
But as Thornton points out, that was before Vance was known and thoroughly disliked by so many people “a drawback that only more brightly highlights Walz’s best attribute: People just like the guy.”
Vance’s nasty accusations may not play as well against “the coach” who is apparently a pretty solid debater himself, although he has downplayed his skills, seriously lowering expectations. Thornton writes about his 2018 and 2022 Gubernatorial debates:
[T]he opponents attacked in ways that Vance did in his debate with Ryan — but with Walz, nothing rattled him. And Walz did indeed get attacked, perhaps because he was the favorite in both races… He answered policy questions on climate change, mineral extraction, working with the federal government and pandemic response straightforwardly but not in much detail, something for which both Jensen and Johnson attacked Walz.
And Walz never really took the bait. Nice guys whom people like can do that, and perhaps that is Walz’s biggest advantage over the unpopular yet fully policy-briefed Vance.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Walz is being underestimated. He was a teacher for years but he’s been a politician for the past two decades and is in his second term as Governor of Minnesota. He’s a pro. His folksy demeanor may just fool the Yale educated but still very green JD Vance into thinking his rival doesn’t understand politics. I think that may be a mistake.
Will tomorrow’s debate tip the scales in this inexplicably close election? Maybe. But in the end it all comes down to the same question: do people want to go back to the negative, chaotic Trump years and spend four more of them dealing with his rage, revenge and retribution? Or are they ready to move past the drama and the stress of that poisonous era and reach for something fresh and new? We won’t find out until the votes are counted.
Salon
