TWatching J.D. Vance's exchange with Tim Walz during Tuesday night's vice presidential debate, what struck me most strongly, and at times darkly comically, was that Vance's top priorities were: The idea was to show America how extravagant and not eccentric he was. There's nothing to see here! He's just a guy with a gentle expression, a polite demeanor, a noble desire to find “common sense, bipartisan solutions,” and an endearing little joke. His expression was so relaxed and urbane that he might have been twirling his cane or sneaking around corners like Top Cat during a debate.
And while the event itself is unlikely to move the election needle, the performance of the two vice presidential candidates provided a useful gauge of where each side believes their weaknesses lie. Both of them were required to act with integrity in such a rehearsed and high-pressure environment, which was a tough task, but Vance was the only one who was tasked with acting normally. did so to a certain extent. Waltz, on the other hand, had to struggle to back up his charm with something more steely and purposeful than empathy. While the presidential candidate can be flashy and show off his jazz talent, the vice president's role is to be the calm voice in the room, and for 90 minutes, the two men tried to improve each other.
The result was a somewhat satisfyingly dramatic exchange in which each side displayed extravagant civility towards the other. When Waltz told his son, witnessed a shooting At the community center, Vance, so human, perfectly strikes the tone he's always struggled with, and immediately elicits sympathy. Walz, however, was more conciliatory on the subject of how to prevent another school shooting, acknowledging that he broadly opposes infanticide, at least in principle. But for Walz, the debate was a difficult proposition from the beginning, given how low expectations were for his rival.
And in the beginning, Waltz seemed to be fluffing things up. He's not a natural debater and is more content to charm voters while buying donuts or cuddling his cat than facing someone on stage, he said. . Vance, by contrast, is a champion debater in college, right down to his small, dead-shark eyes and resting smug face. (Waltz's expression of repose ranged from a look of slight disbelief to a look of full-on horror as if, “Oh, we're all going to die,'' and by the end of the debate, the corners of his mouth were drooping severely. (He looked like Marlon Brando from The Godfather.)
Given the bias we have brought to the party at this stage, I consider, for the sake of argument, the possibility that Vance's rational tone suggests a rational outlook, and I would like to point out that some people sympathetic to Trump I tried to see Waltz's lackluster performance through people's eyes. . Could Waltz's folksy charm be a smokescreen for something more mercenary? Maybe Vance isn't as bad as we previously thought? But then he started talking about how restricting abortion is a way to “give women more choice” and I thought, “This is creepy,” and I was back to square one.
This is the crux of the problem for politicians like Mr. Vance, whose job is to give Trumpist extremism a civilized face. He calmly and cautiously defended the situation, saying that lack of adequate medical care locally has created a situation in which women who miscarry may die while traveling across state lines. Happily, he suggested that school shootings in the United States could be countered by “hardening” school “doors” and “windows.” He argued that the real victims of the U.S. immigration crisis are Border Patrol agents who “just want to be empowered to do their job.”
And when Walz asked him directly whether he thought Trump lost the 2020 election, he dodged the question entirely. “It's pretty shocking,” Walz said after seeing it. There's definitely something weird about presenting a fanatical, life-threatening position in the urbane tone of someone who has something great to offer us all, and yet, sometimes during debates , Vance's more superficial strangeness was still visible. I laughed out loud when he described his wife, Usha, as “a beautiful woman, a wonderful mother to three beautiful children, and a very, very good corporate litigator.” The bottom line? Vance is really creepy.
Of course he's also dangerous. There was only a moment when I thought Vance had dropped his mask. It was 30 minutes later when Walz mentioned Springfield, Ohio, about Vance's lie about Haitian immigrants eating pets. Mr. Walz is more generous than you, saying that Sen. Vance is genuinely interested in solving the immigration problem, but is only making things worse “by aligning himself with Donald Trump.” I admitted it. It was as close as the tone of the conversation would allow to accusing the man of blatant, selfish, almost psychopathic meanness. A flash of anger crossed Vance's face, then his demeanor returned to normal.
