Last night’s debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance wrapped up late enough that few cartoonists have had a chance to weigh in on it, and, if there is a substantial wave of coverage, we can always return to the topic.
But it’s reasonable to believe that Steve Kelley (Creators) drew this ahead of time, because it was widely predicted that Walz’s military career would come up and that didn’t happen. The greater point, and the reason to feature Kelley’s piece, is that it was generally expected that things would be contentious and they weren’t.
CBS had announced that its moderators would not be fact-checking, which I predicted threatened to turn the night into a game of “Is so!” and “Is not!” instead of discussion of plans and policies.
There were, as it turned out, a couple of times when Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did correct Vance on facts, more to bring him back to the question than to dispute his honesty, though he railed against those interventions.
However, they did a good job of remaining firm in watching time and in repeating important questions when either candidate failed to address them. And the debate remained, for the most part, focused on plans and policies rather than on personalities.
On one hand, the debate hearkened back to a more civil time in our political history, in which two candidates with significant differences could get together and hash them out in a polite and potentially productive manner. That’s positive.
But the other part of that is that the people who watched this civilized discussion had most likely already made their choice in the campaign, and, without fireworks, there’s little to rebroadcast for the benefit of the fencesitters who weren’t going to watch 90-plus minutes of discussion.
I doubt many minds were changed.
Clay Bennett (CTFP), having earlier predicted that Vance would wield a baseball bat of lies against the gentleman Walz, came out with this later prediction, and if Vance did play himself last night, it may not have been the worst plan ever, because, in contrast to the pit bull he’s been in the campaign so far, he came across as polite and conciliatory and could have won over some people who had previously dismissed him as a posturing bully.
Then again, he may have disappointed those who liked the posturing bully. Gary Markstein (Creators) dismisses the Nice Guy Vance who showed up last night as a phony, a two-dimensional mask intended to cover up the confrontational reality.
It’s not a bad take, because, while Vance adopted a much more approachable persona, he didn’t actually back away from the claims he and Trump have made in the campaign.
As Nick Anderson (Tribune) suggests, Vance presented the same dubious claims in a far more polite and moderate manner.
However, he still made tariffs sound like a way to increase funding from foreign governments when they represent higher prices on our own shore. He dismissed the Biden administration’s lowering of prescription prices by citing the effect of inflation rather than addressing pharmaceutical price changes. He made the unsubstantiated claim that illegal immigrants are a major cause for the rise in housing costs.
Most outrageous, he denied that Donald Trump had failed to acknowledge losing the 2020 election, making vague charges of wanting fair results and refusing to recognize his runningmate’s active attempts to overturn the results.
Steve Brodner was outraged by Vance’s denial that Trump had sparked a violent uprising, and cited several examples like this one of police officers who were assaulted by the Jan 6 rioters, contrasting their testimony and what TV viewers had seen on that day with Vance’s bland insistence that Trump had peacefully handed over power.
By contrast, the “big lie” that Fox and others have seized upon from Walz was his admission that he misspoke in saying he had been in China during the Tiananmen Square massacre, which he explained by admitting he can be a fumblemouth and meant that he had often traveled to China, including during that summer though after the deaths.
And Walz specifically cited his familiarity with the period as a contrast to Trump’s praise of Chinese leaders, advancing an argument that puts his remarks in context, despite their lack of precision.
It was a contrast, as well, with Vance’s tortured explanation of why the laws that allowed Haitian refugees to claim legal status in this country ought not to exist, and his blaming of Harris for a system enacted before she and Biden or even Trump were in the White House.
Part of Vance’s strength derived from a remark Joe Biden made on the View, in which he said he had delegated much to Harris, though he didn’t say he’d handed over the reins of government to her.
However, Fox and other conservatives pounced on the comment, which gave Vance an opening to speak of the “Harris administration,” greatly overstating the power he says she had to make changes, though Walz often pushed back, pointing out the things only Congress can do.
If Vance does become vice-president, he may be disappointed to find himself in a job that VP John Garner dismissed as “a bucket of warm spit.”
Essentially, as seen in this Pedro X. Molina (Counterpoint) prediction, Vance’s task was to soften the rough edges of Trump’s accusations, which did indeed come to life in the discussion of climate change as well as on the topic of abortion.
In both cases, Vance backed away from the more extreme expressions, admitting the complexities and problems, and blaming “the Harris administration” for how bad things were, suggesting that a Trump administration would approach climate issues and abortion in conciliatory ways that would address problems effectively but more fairly, though not explaining why current approaches failed or how his proposed solutions would work.
It was very civil and polite, but the stark differences between the two campaigns remain, and perhaps those difference are more clear when the discussion is less civil and polite.
It’s being called a tie, and perhaps it was. But with barely a month before the elections, a tie is, as sports enthusiasts say, like kissing your sister: Passionless and without real meaning.
Or as Samuel Johnson said of the Giants Causeway, worth seeing, but not worth going to see.