The governor didn’t seem to have a clear objective in his face-off with Republican JD Vance.
If we needed a reminder of the importance of the vice presidency, we got it just a few months ago, when President Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign, effectively handing the Democratic nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris. Which is why I tore myself away from the baseball playoffs long enough to watch Tuesday night’s debate between this year’s running mates, Tim Walz and JD Vance.
Are these guys ready to be president? I’m joined here by my colleagues Megan McArdle and Gene Robinson, who also love a good debate.
Matt Bai: Guys, before we unpack the individual performances, let’s start this way: You always hear that vice-presidential debates don’t matter much. Did this one matter? Did we hear anything on Tuesday night that might impact the election? Megan, why don’t you go first.
Megan McArdle: Pending results from focus groups filled with people who are not political nerds, I think Vance won this debate pretty handily. And while my initial instinct is to say that this is irrelevant — who votes on the VP candidate? — our colleague Kathleen Parker pointed out in our live chat why it might matter. Donald Trump is almost 80, and the electorate has had a vivid demonstration of what can happen to candidates who are almost 80. So I think it maybe matters that Vance looks like a winner.
Matt: Gene, what say you?
Gene Robinson: Vance was the more polished performer, to be sure, but I’m not sure whether voters will prefer that to Walz’s folksiness and Minnesota-niceness. And if anyone was keeping tally of memorable lines — to the extent that any lines in a VP debate are memorable — I think Walz probably had more of them, especially when he was talking about abortion and Jan. 6.
Matt: I’m going to break the tie and agree with Megan here. Which I kind of hate to say, because I’ve written pretty harshly about Vance and find his rhetoric and casual lying truly appalling. But I thought he actually did himself and his ticket some good. Vance came into this debate with a mission, which was to make himself and his running mate seem more reasonable, less extreme and more respectful of women. He knew exactly what he wanted to achieve, and he was just really good at it. He calibrated his tone really shrewdly. Whereas, I don’t think Walz had an objective other than to answer the questions and talk a lot about Minnesota. And that worked to his disadvantage. He didn’t even mention the “opportunity economy,” whatever that means, until the last five minutes. He didn’t seem to want to achieve any one main thing, and so he didn’t really achieve much of anything, other than to do no harm.
