Smooth, Agreeable, and So Dishonest: JD Vance's Vice Presidential Debate Performance
Vance won against Tim Walz if you don't care about his lies.
JD Vance lied smoothly and agreeably enough to best Tim Walz on style in their vice presidential debate, at least among viewers who don’t know or don’t care what’s true.
The Ohio senator’s polish and fluidity contrasted effectively with the Minnesota governor’s occasionally halting presentation in a genial 90-minute face-off in which each complimented the other and avoided personal attacks. Anyone expecting to hear Vance repeat, for example, his past contemptuous comments about childless women or pet-eating immigrants, would have been surprised by his reasonable and empathetic demeanor. He expressed love for a friend who underwent an abortion.
Vance also presented a striking contrast with his top-of-the-ticket running mate, former President Donald Trump. He eschewed the venom and dystopian visions of Trump’s unhinged campaign appearances.
Like Trump, however, Vance repeatedly stocked those polished answers with false assertions on one subject after another. Take a look at just six of his lies from Tuesday night:
He said Trump had urged peaceful protest on Jan. 6, 2021, and then “peacefully gave over power” to Joe Biden. In fact, Trump incited a violent insurrection and left the White House only after it failed. Unwilling to abandon Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, Vance wouldn’t acknowledge Biden beat him.
Vance said he has never favored a national abortion ban. In fact, he has.
Vance claimed Trump had “saved” Obamacare from collapse. In fact, Trump tried to kill the Affordable Care Act and then damage the law after he couldn’t.
Vance accused Biden and Kamala Harris of driving US manufacturing jobs overseas after Trump revived the sector. In fact, the US had fallen into a manufacturing recession even before COVID collapsed the economy during Trump’s last year in office. The economy now boasts more manufacturing jobs than at any time since 2008.
Vance blamed illegal immigrants for raising housing costs by increasing the demand for lodging. In fact, economists calculate that such an effect is offset by increased housing supply made possible by immigrant construction labor.
He cast Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, as illegal US residents even though, in fact, they entered the country legally. When a CBS moderator ventured to correct him, Vance offered a self-damning protest. “The rules were you guys weren’t going to fact check,” Vance complained.
Walz’s Early Stumbles
Walz stumbled in some answers, most notably when asked about his false statement that he had been in Hong Kong during Tiananmen protests in mid-1989. He traveled there later that year.
“I’ve been a knucklehead at times,” Walz finally acknowledged. “I…misspoke.”
At the same time, his more rumpled delivery underscored the Midwestern everyman appeal that defines his appearances on the stump. And on issues such as preserving abortion rights and access to affordable healthcare, the views he expressed hold the high ground in American public opinion.
And Walz effectively skewered Vance for absurd claims about Trump's post-2020 election behavior and for likening it COVID information "censorship."
"Jan. 6 wasn't Facebook ads," Walz said. When Vance ducked admitting Trump's defeat, the Democrat shot back: "That is a damning non-answer."
The stakes in the vice-presidential debate, of course, were a tiny fraction of those for last month’s presidential debate in which Kamala Harris throttled Donald Trump. Even her lopsided victory nudged polls only a little.
In an era of entrenched polarization, vice presidential candidates sway few voters. Neither Walz’s Minnesota nor Vance’s Ohio are battleground states in this election.
But any difference at all matters in a race this close. Entering the face-off, polls, and election betting markets pegged the Democratic ticket as slightly favored. Any shifts in opinion will take days to surface as voters who didn’t watch the debate live consume snippets in news reports and on social media.
The Credibility Bar
Vance faced somewhat more pressure last night. His poor mid-summer introduction to the American people has left him with a net-negative impression among the electorate; Walz’s well-received debut left a net-positive impression.
Moreover, the late-July withdrawal of President Joe Biden from the contest has reversed the onus of age concerns within the election. Now Trump, whose demagoguery has grown more unhinged and incoherent at age 78, presents the risk of a foreshortened term that would send Vance into the Oval Office.
That makes clearing the Commander-in-Chief credibility bar more important for him than for the running mate of a healthy 59-year-old Harris. On that score, Vance may have made progress on the debate stage.
Vance has tried for weeks to raise doubts about Walz’s credibility, seizing on minor discrepancies in the way the Minnesota governor has described his service in the Army National Guard. The Trump campaign has also tried to discredit regular-guy credentials – a football-coaching, car-repairing schoolteacher – as a front concealing an agenda as “radical” as that of the Californian he’s running with.
Yet Vance has greater credibility problems. As a young celebrity author, he excoriated Trump as the equivalent of heroin for the disaffected, possibly even “America’s Hitler.” After entering Republican politics, he turned fawning sycophant.
In the debate, Vance explained that he’d been wrong about Trump in part because of false media reports. He also steered clear of the cartoonish animus toward women who have not borne babies that helped inspire Walz’s description of his Republican opponents as “weird.” Three words he didn’t repeat: “childless cat ladies.”
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