“Mr Nice Guy”, Tim Walz, showed up at the vice-presidential debate in New York and flubbed it. Perhaps he was over-prepared. Or underprepared. Or just too darned “Minnesota nice”, as they say in his home state. Folks there have a reputation for being congenitally kind and polite. Kamala Harris’s running mate could have pummelled JD Vance for being a mean, small-minded, misogynistic flip-flopper whose sole guiding principle was to suck up to Donald Trump. Instead, he came to praise rather than to bury his opponent.
Vance couldn’t believe his luck. The Republican vice-presidential nominee was only too pleased to play the game that he and the governor were commonsensical, bipartisan people. Walz and Vance kept saying how much they “actually” agreed with each other on housing, jobs and support for families. It was sweet, in a way, to see a Democrat and a Republican spar lightly with each other, harking back to a more gentle era B.T. – Before Trump. But, “C’mon man, give me a break!” Joe Biden might have roared, if he were still awake. There is too much at stake.
After an hour and a half of watching Walz nervously sweat and stumble through the CBS debate, the end could not come too soon for Democrats. Where was the Big Dad Energy that had made their folk hero such a viral fan favourite? Walz’s voice cracked as he delivered his closing pitch to voters. The former small-town high school football coach knew he had let his side down.
Walz normalised him
After brilliantly labelling Vance “weird” at the start of the campaign – what with his peculiar obsession with childless cat ladies and, nudge, nudge, couches – Walz normalised him. It was as though there was nothing to fear after all from a Trump-Vance ticket. This was unexpected, to say the least. Donald Trump Jr smirked on X, “I’m pretty sure that by the end of this debate, Walz is going to vote for JD.”
To be fair, Walz had a couple of breakthrough moments. He shocked Vance by revealing his own son, Gus, had witnessed a shooting at a local sports centre (I hope he didn’t over-egg this story). Directly addressing viewers, Walz asked: “Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?” He went on to chide his opponent for seeking to scapegoat immigrants and people with mental health problems for mass shootings. “Sometimes it’s just the guns.” And he reeled off the names of women who had suffered and died from the lack of abortion access.
Then, in the final minutes, Walz nailed Vance on his willingness to sacrifice democracy for his boss. With any luck this will be the soundbite of the night. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance dodged. “I think you’ve got a really clear choice on who is going to honour that democracy, and who is going to honour Donald Trump,” Walz concluded. But by then, a supremely confident Vance was calling his new buddy by his first name.
And, oh, the gaffes. Walz admitted to being a “knucklehead” for having lied about being in Hong Kong at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. In fact, he turned up there a few months later. This admission was only wrung out of Walz after an excruciating deviation into his regular guy back story, as if that were an excuse for being economical with the truth. He also misspoke about being “friends with school shooters” – surely he meant their survivors.
Unlike Walz, Vance got away with lying, pretending he had “never supported” a national abortion ban, when only two years ago he said he wanted abortion to be “illegal nationwide”. He was never challenged on Trump’s status as a felon and sexual predator, or on his own willingness to abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. The one time the debate moderators chose to fact check Vance, he had a hissy fit. If only Walz had managed to get under his skin like that.
The contrast between the Yale-educated hillbilly and the country school teacher was painful
Vance was as smooth and polished as a gemstone. “Gotta admit JD's ability to code switch from a sociopathic ass who is ambivalent to human suffering on MAGA bro podcasts to a guy who credibly seems like he doesn't want other people to die on the debate stage is a useful political skill that he has deployed with effect,” sighed Tim Miller, a Trump critic for the online publication, The Bulwark.
The contrast between the Yale-educated hillbilly and the country school teacher was painful. Yet Walz, 60, was a congressman for 12 years before becoming governor of Minnesota in 2019. He should have performed better against 40-year-old Vance, a rookie politician who only became a senator for Ohio with some difficulty in 2022.
The consolation for Democrats was that Walz made Harris look good. She succeeded in triumphing over Trump where her running mate failed with Vance. David Axelrod, Obama’s former adviser, comforted himself with the thought that, “Here's the thing: VPs don't make policy. Presidents do. Who talks about the Pence years?!?”
A snap CBS poll suggested the debate might not have much impact on the race. Forty-two percent said Vance won it, 41 percent said Walz did. But it leaves an uneasy sense that the Democratic ticket might be lightweight. There is some buyer’s remorse that Harris did not choose Josh Shapiro, the brainy governor of Pennsylvania, as her running mate.
Trump’s advantage may not last. He has been sounding increasingly tired and confused of late, and is holding rallies at smaller venues than Harris. He has just backed out of an interview on the CBS news program, “Sixty Minutes”, an election tradition (Harris will appear). Yesterday he muddled up the president of Iran with Kim Jong Un, claiming “the president of North Korea wants to kill me”. Is something going on?
The podcaster Mike Murphy, a former Republican, naughtily suggested on X that Trump might be jealous of Vance’s success. “Dark thought I’m sure is ricocheting through Trump’s mind tonight: Vance was focused on his own image rehab tonight with the phony nice-guy routine,” he observed. “Not hammering media and Kamala enough, not serving interests of Trump.”
But choosing Walz was a gamble that may not pay off for Harris. With 33 days to go and early voting underway, she will keep pressing Trump for a second debate but he will be relieved to leave the last word to JD.
