Washington — Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota clashed on Tuesday in a vice presidential debate in which Vance’s well-honed, television-friendly style came up against an aw-shucks approach from Walz that was at times nervous and halting.
The undercard encounter may end up the one that matters least over the course of the 2024 presidential race, but the two candidates talked most about policy, juggling detailed questions on foreign affairs, climate change and immigration during the first half-hour.
Vance, the Republican, and Walz, the Democrat, almost entirely avoided personal attacks as they answered questions about two of the biggest news stories of the day: Iran’s attack on Israel, and Walz’s false claim that he had been in Hong Kong during China’s deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen protests in 1989.
“I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz said in a meandering response that provided little clarity about his misleading comments.
Vance had his work cut out for him, too, refusing to answer a pointed question from Walz about whether he believed his running mate, former President Donald Trump, had lost the 2020 election. The exchange on democracy, which took place almost at the end of the debate, was one of the sharpest of the night.
And Vance also dodged a question about whether a second Trump administration would deport immigrants without legal status who have children who are U.S. citizens, separating the families. (As president, Trump, who has promised “mass deportations” in a second term, separated parents who had illegally crossed the border from their children, generating widespread condemnation.)
Both men avoided giving a straight answer when asked whether they would support Israel if it launched a preemptive military strike against Iran.
While neither candidate seemed to land the kind of viral knockout blow that can make a debate memorable, they both generally accomplished the golden measure of a vice presidential debate: Do no harm to your running mate.
Vance stared straight at the camera and delivered the message that Trump so often failed to hit in his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month: Democrats have been in charge for four years, and things have not gotten better.
“Honestly, Tim, I think you’ve got a tough job here because you’ve got to play Whac-a-Mole,” said Vance, who makes frequent television appearances and often spars with reporters in question-and-answer session after his rallies. “You’ve got to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t deliver lower inflation, which of course he did, and then you’ve simultaneously got to defend Kamala Harris’ atrocious economic record, which has made gas, groceries and housing unaffordable for American citizens.”
For his part, Walz did his best to imitate the approach that Harris took in her debate with Trump, taking most questions and turning them into attacks on Trump’s character and performance in the White House. But he sometimes stumbled over his words and seemed rusty on the debate stage, after the Harris campaign chose to largely keep him away from reporters on the campaign trail.
When he was not talking, the two-term Minnesota governor could often be seen staring at Vance or looking down as he scribbled notes. His eyes were sometimes wide, his mouth twisted in an almost pained grimace, although he grew more comfortable as the night went on — and the television audience most likely shrank.
The moderators made good on their threat to mute the mics, after Vance tried to prolong a discussion on immigration. Vance talked over the two journalists, who were trying to move on, as he insisted on explaining the legal nuances of immigrants who hold temporary protected status in the United States. “Thank you, Senator, for describing the process,” Brennan said rather archly, adding: “Gentlemen, the audience can’t hear you because your mics are cut.”
Walz showed why Democrats believe abortion is their best issue, speaking at length about women in Texas, Kentucky and Georgia who have been put in excruciating positions as they navigated the restrictive abortion laws in those states. “This is about health care,” he said. Vance, who is extremely conservative on the issue, said he wanted policies that “make it easier for moms to afford to have babies.”
Time and again, Vance tried to put a positive spin on Trump’s four years in office, which ended in a deadly pandemic and a major economic recession. One of his most brazen efforts was an attempt to portray the Trump administration as a success on health care. In fact, Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act without ever delivering a health care plan of his own.
Trump campaigned in Wisconsin before the debate, giving two rambling speeches laden with tangents, largely jettisoning any particular focus as he boasted about negotiating over the cost of a new Air Force One and lamented that a 1987 movie about the Vietnam War had not won an Academy Award.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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