ANALYSIS: Mr Slick versus Mr Earnest Nice Guy? Civilised US VP debate stuck to policy ideas, but won’t move dial for voters

Well, okay, it was not a blow-out, especially since initial polling indicates a basic 50-50 split among registered voters about who bested whom. Concurrently, it will not be a debate that will go down in history the way the John Kennedy-Richard Nixon, the Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford, or the Ronald Reagan-Walter Mondale, let alone the 1858 Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas, debates have been recognised.

There were no decisive “gotcha” lines; no shut-the-door on an opponent, rapier-like one-liners sealing the deal. Instead, this debate was, taken as a whole, a civilised, even respectful conversation over actual policies, plans and hopes between two coherent candidates. Again, drawing upon initial polling, both candidates somewhat improved their reputations with voters on things like their suitability to step in as president, if necessary. Similarly, the likability quotient for both candidates seems to have risen following the event – with JD Vance’s improvement especially marked on that dimension, given that he went into this debate tagged by a great many as distinctly unlikeable.

Both moderator/interrogators, CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell, together with Face the Nation – a Sunday news/interview show – moderator and CBS News foreign affairs correspondent, Margaret Brennan, seemed unfazed by their task, largely holding the two candidates to the agreed-upon format and time schedule. On occasion, they issued follow-up questions in an attempt to force a candidate to answer questions posed, but left hanging or having been brushed aside.

The overall demeanour of this debate can probably be, at least in part, from an inevitable seeping in of those well-known Midwestern “nice” values. But there also seemed to be conscious decisions by the two men to speak about the actual (but sometimes feigned, especially those of Donald Trump) details of their respective presidential candidates’ policy ideas.

Despite all this largely adult behaviour, it is also almost certain that the debate changed few voters’ minds – especially among those who have already decided whom they will support. Similarly, the debate probably did not have much – if any – effect on the remaining – small – pool of truly undecided, independent voters.

In that sense, then, this debate probably hasn’t moved the dial much as the country heads towards the 5 November election day. But it did help to make the selection of the two men as running mates seem logical. Tim Walz is the everyman candidate for the Democrats to balance Vice-President Kamala Harris’s perceived elitism, while Vance is the cogent, coherent part of the Republican ticket.

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The main conflict areas were obvious, very different views on women’s reproductive rights and especially Republican efforts to support stronger restrictions on abortion; Trump’s 2020 election denialism and his encouragement of civil violence at the Capitol and a constant effort to overthrow the 2020 election in the courts; and the issues of seemingly untrammelled immigration and the rising cost of living. On the 2020 election, Vance tried to dodge the question about how Trump would – and should – respond to his possible loss this time around at the hands of voters, but most people are almost certainly aware of Trump’s history on such things already.

Vance tried hard – and overreaching – to tie practically every social, economic or public health ill in the country, including opiate addiction, to those presumed hordes of illegal immigrants supposedly destroying the country, and even more supposedly encouraged in their northward treks by Harris. It was also a clear overreach to try to make those illegal immigrants the primary culprits for a shortage of affordable housing or the high cost of rent or home loans for everyone else, but he gave it the old college try. It didn’t work; it doesn’t pass the smell test. But at least we did not have to hear about the puppies and kitties of Springfield, Ohio, in the soup pot, this time around.

There were fairly inconclusive back-and-forths over gun violence, the costs and availability of universal childcare, and how to extend medical insurance. (Amid that colloquy there was the clearly untrue claim by Vance that when Trump was president he had saved Obamacare and brought down the cost of a whole range of standard prescriptions.)

But the two men seemed – at least at times – to be searching for some common ground on childcare, on better ways to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of obviously dangerous people, and on support for fundamental democratic values. That latter should not have been unusual, but coming with Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, it was a small but important step, nevertheless.

Read more: The epitome of Midwestern values, Tim Walz could be the Democrats’ trump card

Read more: Loaded for Bear — Tim Walz takes aim at some of the myths around hunting and its right-wing image

Curiously, international affairs played a very minor role in this debate. There was little discussion about bringing about an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (although Walz did posit the current administration’s role in bringing Nato together to support Ukraine).

Similarly, there was not very much at all about restraining Iran and its proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis – and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as well – from heedlessly charging into a major Mideast war. There was also virtually nothing about restraining China’s expansionist impulses in the South China Sea, although Vance did critique China in the context of the disappearance of jobs in the American industrial heartland.

The two men sparred over the question of climate change, even as the topic became tangled with increased American production of oil and natural gas. It was Vance’s contention that bringing jobs back from Asia would be a net win for restraining climate change because of the American regulatory regimen on emissions – even if a Republican administration would want to roll much of that back if they had the chance.

Read more: Kamala Harris cleans Donald Trump’s clock in American presidential candidates debate — no debate about it

In matters of style, it was clear Vance was the more polished of the two – courtesy of his law studies at Yale University – and he certainly came out of the starting blocks ready to rumble, even if it meant glossing over obvious inconsistencies in Trump’s confusing positions over women’s reproductive rights. Walz, by contrast, seemed somewhat nervous, tentative even, in the opening portion of the debate, only gaining his footing in the second half, drawing on the “I’m just folks, just like you” reflexes that have carried him through the campaign so far.

In sum, little new ground was broken, a few fumbles can be noted, several factual misstatements (okay, lies) were uttered, and earlier miscues left uncorrected, but neither man did themselves great harm. Going into the final month of this abbreviated campaign, the polling says the result remains up for grabs, and with the choice in all of those swing states still too close to call definitively. DM