A slick and confident JD Vance easily defeated a nervous and flustered Tim Walz in the only vice-presidential debate of the 2024 campaign on Tuesday night (Wednesday AEST) in New York City.
In what was a relatively civil and policy focused debate, the 40-year-old Yale-educated Republican senator calmly presented his arguments and by most accounts bested the 60-year-old second term Minnesota governor, who marred his presentation with frenzied note-taking and meandering answers.
The bulk of Americans, who still know relatively little about two candidates plucked from relative political obscurity by their two leaders only in July and August, would have witnessed a likeable, thoughtful Vance, far from the nasty caricature often presented by Democrat-aligned media.
Walz by contrast appeared unprepared – or perhaps over-prepared – and was clearly frazzled by the experience, at one point stating without correcting himself that he’d become “friends with school shooters”, when the conversation turned to gun policy.
Vance then, and at other times, didn’t seek to embarrass the Democrat vice-presidential candidate further by dwelling on the error.
Walz’s performance took an obvious dive around a third of the way through the debate when he in effect admitted that he’d lied – or ‘misspoke’ – about being in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
“I’m a knucklehead at times. Many times I will talk a lot. I will get caught up in the rhetoric,” he told the two CBS moderators, who laudably interjected themselves relatively little into the back and forth.
Vice-presidential debates typically don’t matter in US election campaigns, but this one just might, given the extreme closeness of the race 35 days out from polling day and the fact a second debate between the two presidential candidates is highly unlikely.
The debate started with a question about whether the US should support a pre-emptive strike by Israel, which Walz didn’t answer and instead waffled on about how terrible Donald Trump’s foreign policy was.
Vance simply and clearly said it was up to Israel, in keeping with his habit throughout the rest of the debate of at least trying to answer the questions the hosts presented, whereas Walz repeatedly provided non-answers that revolved around references to his ‘middle class’ background in Nebraska.
The Republican senator repeatedly rammed home the point that Kamala Harris has been vice-president for almost four years yet hasn’t pursued the policies she now says are essential to making lives better for ordinary Americans.
He had the better of Walz on immigration and the economy, two difficult issues for Walz given the rampant inflation and illegal immigration that has dogged the Biden-Harris administration.
Democrats seized on the fact Vance insisted the 2020 presidential election was marred by ‘problems’ and refused to say outright that Donald Trump had lost the election fairly, sticking closely to his leader’s view on the subject.
The two men directed much of their ire at their respective leaders, Trump and Harris. Indeed, the tenor of the contest was in stark contrast to the obvious personal disdain both Trump and Harris felt for each other during their debate.
Throughout both men took opportunities to say they agreed with the other on policy ends, even if they differed over the means to achieve them. Walz stressed the Democrat party had become a broad church of Dick Cheney, Bernie Sanders and Taylor Swift, while Vance expressed gratitude to Robert F. Kennedy Jr and former Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard who have become strong Trump backers.
In his closing statement Walz said his boss had brought “the politics of joy”. Whatever, such sentiments are unlikely to be prominent among the Walz campaign team after his performance.
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