J. D. Vance delivered a master class in intelligent populist politics, and even Tim Walz conducted himself with notable decency.
The final debate of the 2024 campaign is done, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all — given this gauzy, unreal season we have suffered through — is that it was worth waiting for.
As the lone vice-presidential debate between Ohio senator J. D. Vance and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, it seemed fair to say in advance that this was likely to be the least commented upon of them all. (After all, it’s quite hard to top one that ended a presidential campaign after the nomination had been secured, followed up by “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” at the next one.) But instead J. D. Vance delivered a master class in intelligent populist politics, and even Tim Walz conducted himself with notable decency, if not grace or visible comfort.
The major takeaway is this: J. D. Vance won, and he won in the best possible way: by universal acknowledgement, and by surprising his enemies. In a strange way, I can almost convince myself that he benefited from his demonization by the media and the Harris campaign up until now: because nobody who saw tonight’s debate as an undecided voter is going to walk away thinking he was “weird,” that I can guarantee.
Vance was smooth, personable, fluent in the deep details of policy (yet capable of discussing it in a way that wasn’t boring or incoherent), and basically ran rings around a flustered, jittery Tim Walz. It was a knockout in nearly every round of questioning, on style alone. It honestly made me a bit sad, because I wondered why neither presidential candidate could talk about their vision for America with one-tenth the conviction that Vance did — and I don’t even agree with enormous chunks of it in terms of economic policy. If anything, Vance’s most remarkable achievement tonight is that he single-handedly put flesh on the bones of Trumpism — if you hate Trumpism this could well terrify you — and for once made it seem like a governing program rather than a series of slogans.
As for Walz, I fear the reviews tomorrow from his fellow Democrats and the media are going to be utterly brutal. His facial expressions throughout the night made him look perpetually hapless, like Don Rickles’s wimpy Lutheran brother, here to nod eagerly at you instead of hurl insults. Some of his answers were memorably cringeworthy, even taken in isolation: Walz was asked to answer for his serial China exaggerations — when in fact he should more properly have been made to answer for his serial China ties — and spit the bit in a painfully rambling monologue that stopped, started, stopped and restarted again, and felt for all the world like watching Saturday Night Live’s claymation Mr. Bill melt down on camera in the face of a hair dryer.
I predict Democrats will hate how agreeable Walz was all night long — you picked a Minnesotan; you have nobody to blame but yourselves, Dems — how he went out of his way to say he thought Vance was a reasonable man who cared about issues that he cared about. Vance clearly noticed this early on and adroitly leaned in to the politeness, turning it into a lovefest where he was the leader of the kumbaya chorus.
But in all honesty I think both candidates did their presidential nominees a favor with their tone; Vance’s was merely more effective, not just because of his bracingly crisp communicative skills, but because his demeanor is such a shockingly (and refreshingly) unexpected bit of counterprogramming from Trump’s typical half-coherent angry bluster.
It’s been a long-held truism that presidential debates don’t matter, and vice-presidential debates matter even less than that. The unique circumstances of the 2024 campaign already proved the first half of the maxim wrong. Trump supporters should go to bed and wake up tomorrow praying the second half is proven wrong as well, because Vance did everything he ever could have been asked to do for the ticket (and the party overall) tonight.