A clear victory for the man with the heavier work
If viewers of Tuesday night's vice presidential debate were expecting fireworks, they were sorely disappointed.
Unlike the debates earlier in this campaign, there were no moments of car accidents, undignified arguments or vicious swearing.
In fact, both J.D. Vance and Tim Walz approached the debate with notable restraint, politely and kindly deferring to each other and acknowledging when they had found a point of agreement.
"I didn't know your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting," Mr. Vance said, turning to his opponent during a conversation about gun crime. 'I'm sorry about that. Christ, have mercy."
"I appreciate that," Mr. Walz replied. He later told Mr Vance: "I enjoyed this debate."
The only moment of real heat, when the moderators turned off both men's microphones, came during a debate about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
When the same topic came up in the presidential debate last month, Trump generated headlines for days with his claim that migrants were "eating cats and dogs."
This time there was a mysterious disagreement over the specific legal status of Haitian migrants and the forms they use to obtain temporary protected status.
As the candidates argued, host Margaret Brennan intervened: "Gentlemen, the audience cannot hear you because your microphones are dead."
Mr. Vance, who made his name with outlandish statements about "childless cat ladies" and his awkward manner during the campaign, managed to appear warm and human. He was not, in Mr. Walz's words at an earlier meeting, "weird."
His answers to policy issues were detailed, and he repeatedly spoke about children and families in a way intended to appeal to the female voters who are leading Ms. Harris in the polls.
It was Mr. Walz, the man Ms. Harris had chosen for his folksy Midwestern charm, who cut loose for the cameras.
Stuttering over his words, growing irritated and failing to pick up some of the most obvious lines of attack against Mr. Vance, he looked out of his depth at the podium.
At one point he falsely said he had "become friends with school shooters," apparently referring to their parents.
Perhaps the worst moment of his night came when he was challenged about his claim that he was in China at the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Acknowledging that he can be a "knucklehead," he admitted that he "made a mistake" and actually traveled to Hong Kong months later. "I'm going to get caught up in the rhetoric," he said.
His pre-arranged lines of attack on "Project 2025" and the claim that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance would impose a national pregnancy registry came unstuck when his opponent gave a surprisingly measured response on abortion.
"We have to do a better job of regaining people's trust," Mr. Vance responded. "Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies."
There is an obvious reason for the friendliness of the exchange on the debate stage.
Both candidates were actually debating each other's bosses. As Mr. Vance put it at the beginning of the event, "Many Americans don't know who any of us are."
On some issues, including border control, climate change and the economy, there were interesting disagreements between the two men.
But the harshest criticism was instead reserved for Trump and Ms. Harris, who were not in the room.
"A nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about audience size is not what we need right now," Mr. Walz said in response to a question about the Middle East crisis.
Mr. Vance hit back: "When did Iran and Hamas and their allies attack Israel? It was during the Kamala Harris administration."
Tuesday's debate is unlikely to have a major impact on polls ahead of next month's election.
In a presidential race, the only two people who really matter are the two candidates for the top position, who don't face each other again before Election Day.
In a debate in which the prize was for each man to charm the audience on behalf of his boss, Mr. Vance had a much more difficult task. Yet he was the clear winner.
This blind performance could make the difference
Why was JD Vance, a hardcore MAGA convert with apparently limited electoral abilities, elected vice president over Marco Rubio or Tim Scott? Tonight it became clear to us why. Putting his Yale-honed debate skills to the test, the Ohio senator launched a series of forensically devastating attacks on the Biden administration, questioning the vice president's judgment for vice president.
Vance's obvious advantages were made clear in the first few minutes of the debate, with a clear response to the unfolding tensions in the Middle East following Iran's massive missile barrage on Israel. He presented a strong rhetorical defense of a crucial ally, while cunningly reminding voters that no new wars have started under Donald Trump's premiership. It's hard to believe that this was the same man who notoriously struggles to engage with voters one-on-one, and there were no signs of his occasionally awkward vocal tics and stilted delivery. This was pure Ivy League brilliance.
There would be no repeat of Kamala Harris' bait-and-switch strategy that worked so well to elevate her Republican rival in the presidential debate. Indeed, Walz struggled to keep up with the young senator, ignoring his direct provocations to rail against Donald Trump - the man he would clearly have preferred to take on.
Because Walz failed to hold Vance accountable for his unpopular positions on controversial issues like abortion, CBS moderators had to fill in the gaps. Well prepared, Vance was able to fight back without falling into the trap of appearing petulant. He called out the CBS moderator's selective fact-checking before launching his own version against his opponent.
Immigration was always going to provide a powerful soundbite for the MAGA faithful, but J.D. Vance's masterful linking of the border crisis with the fentanyl crisis will especially resonate with working-class voters. Vance turned his nose up at the CBS moderator's loaded terminology, arguing that "the real separation policy in this country is Kamala's open border." Walz's "dehumanization" response felt like a Clinton-era moralistic finger-wagging exercise. He knew that too from his panicked expression.
And what about Hong Kong? Walz's face contorted into a Bidenesque, confused grimace. Hadn't he once claimed to have been in Hong Kong during the brutal Tiananmen Square crackdown, despite actually living in Nebraska? Walz awkwardly tried to dodge the question before admitting he "made a mistake."
Looking like a distracted student called on by a teacher to answer a tricky math question, Walz's performance barely improved in the second half of the debate. In one particularly brutal episode, Vance systematically rattled off the Trump administration's material policy gains, such as lower inflation and higher take-home pay. Vance sympathized with the "tough job" of "whackamole" Walz would have to play to avoid giving credit to the former president. As he swallowed, his eyes started to widen.
If presidential debates don't matter, VP debates are so unimportant that they hardly warrant a second thought. Normally. But this is not a normal election cycle. A bizarre debate performance exposed Biden's mental frailty, setting in motion a brutally rapid defense of a sitting president and the queen-making of his lowly regarded deputy.
The Harris campaign has since tried to sustain itself purely on good vibes and high energy, a strategy that has failed to sway the all-important independent voters in a nail-biter of an election. Make no mistake: Walz's folksy gee-shucks routine was a deliberate attempt to get those voters on board. But like his boss, Walz has proven that a compelling media story does not make a leader. In a nail-biting election, this blind performance could make the difference. The really bad VP choice revealed itself Tuesday night - and it wasn't the guy from Ohio.
