Last night’s vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz should have unnerved America. It proved that the spares are better than the duo running for president. Compared with the presidential debate, when Kamala Harris baited an irascible Donald Trump for 90 minutes, this ranked as a Socratic dialogue. The VP picks actually talked about policy and didn’t shout at each other. Vance’s comment – “I appreciate what Tim said about Finland!” – summed up the tone. In a campaign which has been anything but, at one-point Walz described their differences as “philosophical”.
The Harris team have so far used Walz like a campaign’s mascot, warming up crowds with his Donald Duck smile and affected high-school coach demeanour. He’s done few interviews. This lack of practice on cable TV each day showed in the debate. He was nervous. He tripped through his allotted two minutes. In one memorable faux pas, he said: “I’ve become friends with school shooters.” He was flummoxed by a question about why he had said he was in China during the Tiananmen Square protests when he was not. He used prepared put-downs at random, which created clanking non sequiturs, and spent too long talking about his home Minnesota (did you know the Great Lakes contain 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water?).
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