The vice presidential debate is over, which means the pundits will now spend the next 48 hours talking about who “won.” Here’s my answer: nobody. Certainly not the American people. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sen JD Vance of Ohio spoke to their respective audiences. I doubt they did much to convince undecided voters. And they did nothing at all to inspire. At the end of the night, I was left with just one question: Is this the best we’ve got?
Let’s start by giving the howler of the night to Vance, who said he has been “extremely consistent” in his views on former President Donald Trump and Trump-style politics. Sure, and Joe Biden is planning to run the New York City Marathon next month.
Back when he was the iconoclastic author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance worried Trump could be “America’s Hitler,” which seems like something you say about a guy you are not super-fond of. He continued to hold such critical views of Trump until 2020.
There was the MAGA convert extraordinaire onstage at the CBS News studio on 57th Street, shilling for a man he once likened to a genocidal dictator.
So how did Vance end up as Trump’s running mate? During the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, Vance said he had “believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of [Trump’s] record.” Right, that must be it: The guy who wears his time at Yale Law as lightly as a cinder block lacked the sophistication to properly judge Trump’s record. In fact, he seems to have judged it pretty well, until his ambition kicked in.
So there was the MAGA convert extraordinaire and least popular vice presidential candidate in recent memory onstage at the CBS News studio on 57th Street, shilling for a man he once likened to a genocidal dictator. Politics sure does sound like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?
Vance declined to walk back the lies he has promulgated about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. And his thoughts on school shootings were crushingly meager: “We have to make the doors lock better,” he said with what appeared to be a straight face. In 1991, former President Ronald Reagan came out in favor of an assault weapons ban. And now the party he once led is talking about better locks. His daughter Patti Davis recently wrote in The New York Times that he would “weep” for America today.
To be fair, conservatives seem to think Vance did a fine job of defending Trump’s record. Alyssa Farrah Griffin, a former Trump White House staffer who now opposes him, offered that Vance was a “very good communicator,” though one who “lacks authenticity.” Sure enough, Vance wasn’t Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle. But it’s a sad comment on our politics that those are standards on which we judge our candidates.
For that matter, I can’t say that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, his Democratic opponent and Kamala Harris’ running mate, did all that much better. He doesn’t creep me out the way Vance does, with his undercooked musings on demography, but he doesn’t thrill me, either.
In a suit, onstage, [Walz] is just like another politician — and not an especially adept one, at that.
When he was introduced by Harris as her running mate several years ago (what, that was only August?) Walz said he couldn’t wait “to debate the guy,” promptly making a joke about Vance romancing a couch. After months of watching Biden plod through the motions of campaigning, Democrats were happy to laugh. But when the debate finally came, there was much less to celebrate.
In old clips from the Minnesota State Fair, Walz perfectly plays the part of the normie dad. But in a suit, onstage, he is just like another politician — and not an especially adept one, at that.
He looked nervous, and his voice sounded thin. Asked about a lie he’d told about being in Hong Kong during the protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, Walz stammered through a largely incoherent response. “Many times I talk a lot, I get caught up in the rhetoric,” he finally said. Fair enough, but haven’t we had enough political leaders who get caught in their own rhetoric? Ahead of the debate, Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul wrote that “we need to hear more from the ticket beyond Harris’ broken-record talk about small businesses, middle-class Americans and abortion rights, as safe and winning as those ideas may be.” We didn’t. Instead, Walz reiterated that Harris would practice “the politics of joy,” whatever that means. To be clear, I don’t think the two candidates, or presidential tickets, are equal. Asked about election integrity, Vance repeated shameless lies about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which Trump instigated and most Republicans defended. Asked bluntly by Walz whether Trump lost the 2020 election, Vance started talking nonsensically about “censorship.” His fear came clearly through my small television screen. “That is a damning non-answer,” Walz shot back. I concur with Puck reporter Tara Palmeri, who said that, in that exchange, the Minnesota governor delivered what “might be one of the best lines of the debate.” It showed who Vance was, how little intellectual courage he has, the enormous compromises he has had to make to reach the summit of Republican politics. Enjoy the view from Mount MAGA, JD. I don’t think you will be there for very long.
Alexander Nazaryan
Alexander Nazaryan writes about politics, culture and science. 
