Normally, ‘veep’ debates don’t really matter. This time it does

Time was when a column could plausibly be penned arguing that televised debates were overhyped and overrated when it came to determining the outcome of presidential elections.

Democrat John Kerry, who bested George W. Bush on the debate stage in 2004, never got to walk into rooms accompanied by the thumping beat of the presidential anthem, Hail to the Chief. Mitt Romney, who trounced Barack Obama in their first encounter in 2012, also ended up the loser.

Rival versions of America: J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, vice presidential candidates.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

As for the idea that vice presidential debates could materially affect the result, it bordered on the risible. Who can remember the clash in 2016 between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine, the respective running mates of then-presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? Some would even struggle to recall Kaine, a quietly spoken senator from Virginia.

In such a delicately calibrated election as this one, however, anything could shift the needle. That partly explains why the vice presidential showdown between the Republican J.D. Vance and the Democrat Tim Walz on Wednesday from 11am AEST is getting the Las Vegas pre-fight treatment.

Obviously, this contest is not on a par with the heavyweight clash that pitted Vice President Kamala Harris against Trump, but nor are their running mates mere bantams. What makes their encounter all the more meaningful is that the men personify rival versions of America, and also US politics.

Paradoxically, for a campaign with the slogan “We’re not going back”, Walz feels like a reassuring character from America’s past: the down-to-earth Midwestern dad who grew up in rural Nebraska; the bespectacled high school teacher; the football coach who transformed his team of no-hopers into state champions; a Norman Rockwell painting made flesh and blood; a character from a Frank Capra movie – George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, without the existential dread.

Who against whom? Democrat Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, came up against Republican Mike Pence in 2016.Credit: AP

Vance, by contrast, seems to personify America’s potentially dark and creepy future. This frat boy-like figure feels like a creature of the misogynistic “manosphere”, what with his trash talk in 2021 about America being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies” such as Harris.

With his beard, German shepherd dog, Atlas, and hardline social conservatism, he also gives off The Handmaid’s Tale vibes.

“I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” he said in January 2022. Though his public stance has softened since, he is still frequently likened to a character from Margaret Atwood’s fictitious dystopia, the Republic of Gilead. Not a good look when wavering women voters are such a vital swing demographic.

This Ivy League populist, an alumnus of Yale Law School, has also become a super-spreader of misinformation, most notably the dangerous canard that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing pets and eating them.

What makes Vance doubly significant is his personal political journey. First, he came to prominence as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a stylishly written memoir that helped America’s media elite, and others, navigate from afar the hollowed-out Appalachian communities where Trump became “cultural heroin”.

Tim Walz in his now trademark camouflage cap.Credit: The New York Times

Back in 2016, the bestselling author described himself as a “Never Trump guy”, and conjectured the “idiot” from Trump Tower could become a “cynical asshole like Nixon” or even “America’s Hitler”. However, after Trump had won the presidency, and Vance set his sights on winning the US Senate seat in Ohio, he became a Trump impersonator. Now, he speaks with the conviction of a Trump convert. Many Republicans have followed a similar path, some out of opportunism, some out of fear and some out of missionary devotion.

While Vance has become a skilled practitioner of polarisation – to pleasure the MAGA base, he knows precisely which buttons to press on immigration, wokeism and the othering of Harris – Walz represents a more conciliatory brand of politics.

The Minnesota governor comes from a rare and dying breed: a Democrat with appeal in conservative-minded areas. For six terms, he represented a largely rural seat in Congress that he won in 2006 from a six-term Republican incumbent. This retired National Guardsman is also a gun owner who used to get an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association (now it’s an “F”). When Harris phoned to ask him to be her running mate, he was wearing what has now become his trademark: a camouflage hat.

Obama and Joe Biden both won the presidency by making inroads among white voters in rural areas. Walz is on the Democratic ticket to help pull off the same trick.

What makes this encounter so enthralling is that Vance now speaks fluent Trumpese while Walz has mastered the tongue of Trumpian counter-language. Indeed, the Democrat’s national breakthrough came on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in late July, when he dubbed Trump and Vance “just weird”, a pithy summation that has helped frame the entire election. Their showdown promises to be a clash of political cultures.

Frequently in this era of extreme polarisation we talk of split-screen America. But in this week’s vice-presidential debate, two men who epitomise two different Americas will appear together in the same shot.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.

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